Question: Are the light beams lazers which are very dangerous or just a high concentration of light which are harmless?

Susan Skelton answered on 19 Nov 2013:

Hi u12mussont!
Good question!

The light beams that I use are lasers, as this is the best way to get a really strong light beam. The light from lasers all travels parallel in the same direction producing a narrow beam, so it’s easy to direct the light to where we want and concentrate it down to a small area (which is really important for holding and moving objects). You can compare this to the light from a lightbulb which goes in all directions so it’s difficult to collect it and direct it to where we want to use it.

Laser beams can be dangerous – it depends how powerful they are. Your remote control switches on your TV using a weak laser, but this one isn’t dangerous at all!

High power lasers can be dangerous because they can burn things. This happens because there is so much light energy concentrated in a small area, so it can set things on fire in the same way that it’s possible to light a campfire by using a magnifying glass to concentrate the light from the sun. If we are not careful it’s possible for the laser to burn our bodies or set something in the lab on fire.

When we use dangerous lasers, we have to be very careful and use special protective equipment. The most important thing to protect from laser light is our eyes as the laser can easily burn the back of the eye and make us blind. So when we work with lasers we wear special goggles which block the laser light from reaching our eyes. If the laser is particularly strong we can also wear gloves and special coats to protect our skin.