We were "cleaning" some of my stash and Marilyn wanted to know why I have the front surface(FS) mirror from the old 63" Mitsubishi in my tack room. I explained that in college we used front surface to bounce lasers without the thickness of the glass dispersing the beam. Brutally exact measurements. Question: Anyone every use these FS mirrors and small watt lasers inside a case? How about small FS mirrors and "spotlight LEDs" like Doom 3? No Disco balls allowed! John
Being unable to see light in the air, mirrors in a case would be fairly useless. I had the idea years ago but couldn't find a practical means of doing it. You could do it if you wanted a smoke machine in your PC, but that could wreak havoc with your things.
Well I'm not sure if it fits in the same classification but I have a green laser that I bought at a local Spencer's for $40 that I can see the beam in the dark. Depending on the cost you're willing to spend the beams get more visible. Sure this relies on dust particles and what not but there is no place a computer will be that won't have dirt floating around, correct?
Clean rooms are notoriously dust-free... If you can suffer the hygienic neglect of your PC I guess it might work to a point. You run the risk of blinding yourself and/or your loved ones though.
Hi Folks I hope the lasers you're using are very low power, you can give youself serious and permanent eye damage with all but the lowest powered lasers - especially if you use them in low ambient light conditions as your iris will be open much wider than normal. Even scattered (reflected) laser light can be dangerous so lets be careful out there.
No disco ball? what about aiming at one of those lava lamps filled with glitter? I have seen a laser in one of the Chinese builders' rigs, but no bouncing or beam splitter. What kind of results would you get if you fire it through a clear reservoir? Or bounce it around inside a plexi waterblock top. It would be neat if you could build an all-plexi coolant system that was lit with a single laser through the center. -Or would the liquid scatter the light too much? Edit: Careful? what is this word?
Shooting a laser edgewise through plexi looks pretty cool, you get the edge-lighting like with an led but with that cool laser shimmery effect. One of those cheap plexi rods with the bubbles in it looks awesome too.
We passed lasers through water tanks a few times as part of the physics lab I TAed for. If I remember correctly, the water dispersed the laser somewhat, but not to the extent that one would hope for. I believe we split the laser into 5 beams to pass through the water tank, and each one diffused noticably but to a very minor effect. LEDs are much better for this type of task since they emit diffuse light to begin with, and clear LED housings can be clouded to amplify the effect. I tried testing this with my SPDIF, but it diffuses too rapidly.
