Underwater lasers

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Laser is a beam of coherent light, so I would guess it reachesmore far than what the diver has an impression what his depth of view is.

It all depends on how much energy the beams loses when it hits a floating particle.

This is what I was interested to know from the OP: if I have a (let's say) real 50mW green laser, and a level of x particles by cm3, what far will it reach.
Whatbis the influence if I only use a red laser, or if I change to 100mW.

Would be nice if the OP could contribute. Also would be good for the OP if he would take some lead in the discussion, or let us know whether he is just waiting to collect ideas.

Sorry, for not replying sooner. I have changed my settings to get daily updates instead of weekly.

Obviously the higher the power the further transmission. And additionally, your wavelength will be more transmissive at blue or green than red. as for the particle density, this is something I have not seen or tested with exact science to know my particle density. Let's just say, in the spring, when I hadn't opened my pool, in green water, the laser did go completely across the pool at 5mW power. That was not a completely disgusting green, but pretty green, so the particle density would be pretty high. I will see if I can find any data on the transmission with respect to particle density.

I'd like to thank everyone that has posted here. Great feedback and it is great to have such a good level of response, either negative or positive....really, i am trying to consider if I should really build these. The other option that I have considered that may be more reasonable is to build a dive light, that also has a laser embedded within it. So that way, you have something you really need, and if you decide you need to use a laser for some reason, it is also available. That seems like a more reasonable item to carry on a dive. The issue with this, is something everyone seems to suggest....let's get the highest power we can in that laser. The government is the only thing holding us back from selling high powered lasers. This may actually be somewhat intelligent, even though I'm typically not for gov't control of things, the level of stupidity out there is sometimes surprising, so control of higher powered lasers is warranted, but my argument is that 20 Milli-Watts, is still not that high.

---------- Post Merged at 12:16 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 12:12 PM ----------

Was thinking about them as a way marker, this assumes however that the beam would be visible for about 50-100m, even in non-optimal conditions.

Yes, I guess i have thought of this as well, but you would potentially want to make them much cheaper than I currently can make them. In case you want to use several and then you can't always retrieve them for some reason or another, losing $10 isn't too big of a deal, but if you lose your $100 way marker, would be a bit more of an issue. I think with 5mW in ocean water you could come close to 50 meters. You might need to go up to 10 or 20 mW to get to the 100 meter transmission.....for somewhat cloudy, high particulate water.
 

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