It’s all those things? :eek:
One of those and an iPad and you never need anything else ever again.
Tigers ignore laser pointers, you’d need a laser flashlight.
You also need a knife. Unless that’s built in as well.
I’d like to point out that the current thinking I’ve been seeing on dog-themed message boards is that use of laser pointers – or any moving light – as a dog toy is counterindicated.
The risk is habituating the dog to chasing moving light. Other moving lights, including headlights from passing cars, streetlights shining through moving tree branches, and so on, can not only cause the dog to actively make noise in the middle of the night, but, since they go on all night, can induce a lot of tension and strain in dogs who are used to getting all keyed up for a moving light. Some dogs have become nervous wrecks after getting obsessed with lasers. Some people have reported their dogs now bark in frustration at every moving light.
IMHO it’s not worth it.
I discovered that my green laser pointer makes some funky patterns if I shine it at my wife’s crystal knickknacks. She has this little village made of Waterford crystal, and the crystal breaks the laser up into some crazy scatter-patterns, especially in a darkened room. The crystal candy jar makes even crazier patterns.
Wet blanket here. I’ve been reading that the infrared scatter from cheap green laser pointers can damage your eyes: http://www.technewsdaily.com/dangerous-infrared-light-leaks-from-cheap-green-laser-pointers-1036/
Of course any laser pointer can damage eyes, kids playing with them tend to make me nervous.
All kinds of glass objects do this. Try empty jars (especially those with rough sections around the bottom). Or drinking glasses with some sort of texture to them.
I would imagine that if you have bombs laying around that Homeland Security would be interested in this also.
My previous cat was indifferent at best to laser pointers. The current cat will chase the dot, at least until her attention span gives out :).
They’re also useful with small children.
You can also demonstrate principles of optics.
Shine the light upwards through the bottom of a glass of water and demonstrate total internal reflection when you hit the critical angle.
Show refraction of light at an interface by watching the beam bend as it passes into water from above.
Put sugar at the bottom of a glass of water and let it dissolve quietly to form a sugar concentration gradient, then show gradient index variation when the laser beam gradually bends pasing through it.
Use a glass ball or a spherical container of water (or us the circular cross-section of a round glass filled with water) to demonstrate how light passes through a raindrop and forms a rainbow.
Bounce it off a CD or DVD and observe diffraction grating effects.
Bounce light off a reflecting surface onto a wall to show Laser Speckle.
Shine the light through fine weave silk (as Hopkinson did, with ordinary light, back in the 18th century) and project diffraction patterns on the wall.
If you do siome of these experiments with both a red and a green laser pointer, you can show how the effects are wavelength-dependent. You can even measure the wavelength of the light by measuring the diffraction patterns and knowing the spacing of lines in your silk/CD/DVD.
Actually, the biggest use our laser pointers get in our house is as a cat toy. All three of them go nuts over the dot, but Hestia goes the most insane over chasing it.
This was invented (at least in an early form) by Léon Theremin in the 1940’s or so. Yes, same guy who invented the electronic musical device.
(ETA: Not sure if that link is working quite right. Seems like you have to scroll UP a page to get to the start of the relevant Wiki paragraph.)
I hear you can also use them to distract zombie cats.
So, my wife and I got a cat recently. Not only does he love chasing the dot, but he seems to know what it comes from. Whenever I pick up the laser pointer, before I turn it on, he gets all excited, like a dog seeing his owner grab a tennis ball.
Using a laser?
Star gazing with friends with the green lazer.
Stay the Hell away from the airport!
BTW–I work at an airport. I don’t want a Cessna in my lap.
Using one to build a really cool Star Trek laser gun from The Cage.
Shine it back & forth across the ceiling & walls & you don’t need to take the dog for a walk in the rain.
Bonus: it’ll take him 5-10 mins after you stop to finally give up & realize it’s not coming back so I can exercise him while doing something else in another room.
Take it apart to make a macro lens for your smartphone!
Yep. You won’t see color separation, but you can clearly see how the rainbow occurs at a minimum. And with a coherent surce like a laser you’ll see the supernumerary bands really well.
Your link has an additional #Espionage on it, which says to scroll to a section of the page. You probably wanted it to show http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Theremin instead of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Theremin#Espionage
-D/a