CrunchGear

I’d build a lightsaber. ;) I knew someone was going to say it, just had to be first.

Holography obviously. A green laser is great for making holograms of people especial tanned or dark-complexioned people. Of course the exposure time would be too long.

I would use it from my living room to signal my wife using semaphore to grab me a Vanilla Thick and Creamy Yoplait yogurt.

Point it on the guy who points all those red dots when i am watching the movie at the theater.. give him a taste of his own, only a magnitude much greater.

I would use it at my monthly technology meeting. I currently use a regular pointer but it would be fun to replace the screen with paper (make it look like the normal screen). During the presentation, start burning the screen (being careful not to hit reflective objects). Maybe even put something on or on the back of the paper to cause it to burst into flames or pop.

Squirrels…Oh boy Oh boy!!!

I would use this to torment my cats. If the way they chase after the $4.99 laser pointer I got at the gas station is any indication, this thing should prove to be at least 100x the fun.

Scientific experiments. My dad was a physics teacher and we used to make holograms with a HeNe laser way back when. I’d love to try one of those things out and see what can be (safely!) done with it. How many trash bags can it burn through? Can you light a match with it? Do different colored items burn easier? I’ve always wanted a laser but they were always way too expensive.

The CEO just moved his desk right down the row from me….. would love to laser his face all day…..could be fun!

I would shine it through the windows of the Transamerica building in downtown San Francisco to watch the refraction fun!

I would use it to create a time lapse photo of something written in the night sky. Possibly also going for some really long shutter action to produce a picture with the starry streaks where the earths rotation over half an hour or so causes the stars to create a light streak on the picture.

1. See if I can hit the other end of the SF Golden Gate bridge from Golden Gate Park
2. try to light candles with it, maybe at a distance if it works close-range
3) test if this thing, with enough patience, can wreak havok on the almost-new hard drive that randomly crashed two weeks ago and couldn’t be salvaged with Ubuntu live-booting or being put into an external enclosure
4) once they make even more crazy lasers, put this sucker on eBay and see what fool(s) will dish out money for “antique value”
5) quite honestly, will probably screw up my vision temporarily a few times while playing with it

I will buid my own version of the SDI.

I would use it in my various lectures and classes to inflict “noticable” pain on:

1) The annoying kid in the front row who continues to ask stupid questions right before the professor lets us out an hour early, thus prolonging class.

2) The person that continues to go off on on political tangents about Che Guevara each and every week.

3) The student that argues with the professor for 20 minutes about why the dynamic systems model they created as an example for the class doesn’t adequately address real world concerns in administrations.

4) John and Lee Hotti

I love lasers. If I were to receive said laser device I will probably ending up burning a lot of stuff. Combine that with mirrors and smoke I could have more own wicked laser show in my bedroom. I doubt my parents would be pleased.

I’d sprinkle small piles of flash powder all over the place, and then, when I need a little dramatic flair, light them up with the laser for a small (but noticeable) explosion.

Well, I’d use it to demonstrate my idea for the global solar energy grid, running on top of an all fiber optical network.

I’d point the laser right into a fiber optic cable, part of the fiber infrastructure in my company’s building complex, hoping to be able to digitize it, wrap it with an IP address, and send it as data packets to my boss’s computer, where it will open a splash screen on his PC and tell him what I REALLY think about him..

Anyway, I do have a serious idea on how to run solar energy on optical fiber networks, the same network which are the backbone of the internet. Imagine that - being able to share solar energy on bittorrent.
Anyway, I submitted my idea to this crazy green idea thing, you can watch it at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkZg_QqZvo4

I would have two projects:
1. First I would make a laser surveillance system like shown here:http://www.instructables.com/id/Laser-Surveillance-System-for-under-%2420/

With a laser like that you would get some awesome range

2. I would make a XY laser plotter in order to write on my wall. I would the interface the laser plotter with my computer to have it display status info on my wall like if I have any new emails. Or just to display the crunch gear RSS feed.

you almost the whole interface?

I would train a team of pigeons to drop their poo-bombs on laser-green colored objects. Then, from afar, I would paint my enemies’ cars with the laser pointer and unleash the fleet of pigeons to do their damage. Vengeance would be mine, and I would be nowhere near the scene of the crime. That parking spot was mine!

Astronomy/Stargazing - Yea, i know… not very creative but at least it’s something I’ll actually do. It’s a childhood passion that I never got to pursue very much and didn’t really had any fancy stuff like this. Anyway, it would give me an excuse to take some friends to Santa Barbara with me and get to a mountain top, and point out the constellations.

I’d make a musical instrument out of it by modifying a laser people-counter or scanner. Passing an object or hand through the beam would produce a note or percussive sound. This would be a great street-performance instrument, because of the green glow and the risk of burns to the performer if you leave your hand in the stream too long.

I would tie a rope to it, wear it around my neck, and go pick up my friend at Logan Airport.

Half a mile range?

When making a presentation at the office, I’d use it to point things out… while telecommuting from my desk at home.

Hook it up to a car battery and blow up the moon.

1) I would use it to have a bit of a joke with teachers at my school by pointing it into the teachers lounge from way away so that they don’t know whats going on :)

2) I love the popping baloons thing, I’d take a trip to the city and pop some balloon sellers balloons :)

I would wait till winter…(not that far off here in mn) then I’d walk out on a frozen lake and cut a hole in the ice and see if I could light up that sheet of ice like a Russian Disco.

I would use it to chase cats out of my yard..they love to follow little laser red dots so why not green… They can run 1000’s of feet away tring to follow it then I could just turn it off…. Cat gone!

I’d give it to my wife so she can start literally burning money.

I would use the laser to annoy the hell out of the damn pigeons crapping all over my building, hopefully forcing them to leave…. ohh and um I would end world hunger with it too, naturally.

I would use it to zap all the surveillance cameras we have spying on us.

I’d tell my 5 year old son that while I was driving home I came across a crashed space ship within which was a dying alien, named Abin Sur. And that he gave me his power wand inducting me as a member of the Green Lantern Corps, an interstellar organization of police overseen by the Guardians of the Universe. I’d let him know that he was the only person who knew and that it was our secret that I’m now a superhero.

I have a medium-size telescope on a motorized mount that I sometimes use to lead astronomy outings. I’d mount the laser on the telescope so that the people who aren’t looking through the eyepiece can see where the telescope is pointed. Then while they’re waiting for their turn they can at least get a big-picture view of exactly where that galaxy that they can’t see yet is located in the sky. And besides, kids would love the coolness factor that a laser brings to the whole experience!

1) I would film the final installment in the trilogy for “Laser Cats”.

2) I would bombard my body with the powerful rays from the green laser and turn into a little less than Incredible, but a Hulk nonetheless.

Umm I don’t know maybe blind pilots as they flew over my house?!Or maybe not, especially when it could be used as a lame excuse to go stargazing which always leads to making out! Especially if you accidentally blind the girl to help her forget what you look like, or vice versa:)

Decisions, Decisions.

Either I’d attach it to this sick puppy and terrorize the neighborhood children (http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/09/25/draganflyer-your-personal-six-rotor-uav/#more-44495)

or…

Attach it to my new set of Party Rats (see today’s CrunchGear posts) and hope to finally gain some respect at the local discotheque.

I can think of all kinds of things that are more fun than ice fishing, but I seem to drag that little shack hundreds of yards across the ice every winter and proceed to freeze and drink beer for hours on in and seldom catch any fish. Point the laser down the hole and freak out other ice fisherman nearby when the ice round the house starts glowing green, yes please. Etching designs in the ice…sounds better than staring at a dark circle begging the fish to bite. Who knows…maybe it will be the ultimate fish atractant.

I’d use it to point out errors in my professor’s notes on the board. It’s annoying to try and point from the back of a lecture hall. The green dot of God from the back of the room when he writes up the equation of harmonic motion wrong would be a funny way to remind him to get the sign right for our notes.

If you sent me that laser, I would shine it through a diamond or crystal and see if it burns everything within its vicinity.

Actually, come to think of it, I would probably just try to cook an egg with it. I like eggs.

I have been involved with amateur radio so I would probably do some experimenting by communicating using the laser and Morse code. I would probably try it with another person and see how far away we could be and still decipher what was trying to be said.

At my school there was just installed a massive light sculpture, topped off with a massively powerful spotlight that I can see from my apartment a couple of miles off of campus, even on cloudy nights. It reminds me of the Luxor in Vegas. I personally, as well as some of my friends from the physics department, would love to be able to dwarf that thing with a handheld laser.

Plus then there’s all that lab equipment to play with- I know we have some very powerful lasers that were, at the time, a few thousand dollars a piece but a little comparison/showdown would be pretty interesting, don’t you think?