Creation of Plasma Ball with a Icecream Spoon !

[femtoman]

YES ! It is possible !

video in HD under : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzEDrpvEdPs

[dkumpula]

The bare hand placement of objects in front of the high power pulsing laser is . . interesting(?)

[VDX]

... no real danger of getting holes into the skin - I'll estimate some ten 'shots' on the same zone to get first visible/senseable effects.

There are some videos out there, where people are cleaning their hands and nails with scanning pulsing NdYAG-lasers in the multi-kW-range, which are normally used for cleaning metal off from paint or architectural/stone surfaces from ambient contamination ... and the 1064nm from the NdYAG are much more dangerous than the CO2 lasers ...

Viktor

[frostypaw]

I think you could tell me that was safe twenty times and show me a dissertation on it and I'd still need to put some bacon in front of it first!

This may be a massively n00b question but when you put the mirror into the beam why does the blast appear so far in front of the surface? It seems counter-intuitive

[VDX]

... the 'blast' (='energy breakdown' in air) needs a really high energy density of some Giga-Watts per cm², what's only given in the spot of the concave mirror ...

Viktor

[dnar]

I can only shudder...

[frostypaw]

... the 'blast' (='energy breakdown' in air) needs a really high energy density of some Giga-Watts per cm², what's only given in the spot of the concave mirror ...

Viktor

Ah ok so that mirror was concave not planar - all makes sense in my head now it's very impressive

[planters]

The spoon is also acting as a very poor quality concave mirror and focusing the 10.6um light a short distance in front of it. The extremely short FL of the spoon compensates for the low quality.