If the rear fog light on cars was made up of a cluster of low-power red (HeNe?) lasers (like laser pointers) then they would show up really nicely in fog as a sort of gleaming red shaft.You could also have auxilary lasers mounted in your brakelights for use in fog. I think, just visualising the effect, that it would look best if the lasers came on about half a second after the main brakelights.Of course, if cheap white lasers were available you could do this for the front lights too.-- hippo, Jun 03 2004 White laser http://www.uthscsa....ges/white_laser.htm:-P [Worldgineer, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 06 2004] Backup Smoke http://www.halfbake...idea/Backup_20SmokeWould work well with this idea (though I already thought of that) [Worldgineer, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004] That would look pretty. Often times I take my lasers to the swamp during the fog and play around with them. ++-- sartep, Jun 03 2004 While it would look cool from an angle, it would look cool for about .05 seconds if you're driving the car directly behind them.
Even if they were to point downward, there's still the risk of the light hitting a reflective surface, or shining into oncoming traffic if you have an accident.
Also, there are no white lasers.-- Guncrazy, Jun 03 2004 [Gc], point them upwards. Or point them slightly downward and lense them to disperse after a few dozen feet.-- Worldgineer, Jun 03 2004 Red gets soaked up fast by fog. You want these to be violet.-- bungston, Jun 03 2004 Which is why they wouldn't (as [Guncrazy] aserts) blind tailgaters.-- hippo, Jun 03 2004 A few diode lasers angled slightly downwards would not be a danger and would help show the track of the vehicle in front. The driver behind would get advanced warning of a sharp turn.-- FloridaManatee, Jun 03 2004 How about just bright LEDs? Why the lasers?
Dental lasers aren't visible spectrum [World] no matter what the illustration portrays.-- bristolz, Jun 03 2004 bristolz: Some medical lasers (moderately high-powered infra red) also include a low-powered red laser which projects along the same axis. The red laser is too weak to have any particular effect except that it allows the laser surgeon to see where the laser is pointing. I would expect dental lasers would do something similar.-- supercat, Jun 04 2004 That's the guide laser not the dental laser which are typically YAG and quite high power.-- bristolz, Jun 04 2004 [Worldgineer]: Point it up? What, and blind airplane pilots, too?
[hippo]: Ah, but you won't always be driving in fog. And if the fog is that thick, you should probably just pull over and wait it out, anyway. If it's thick enough to obscure your laser, how will you see the unilluminated back of THAT TRU...(airbag.wav)-- Guncrazy, Jun 04 2004 [bz] Yeah, I was somewhat sure there were not white lasers (what with needing the same frequency and all). I was just playing with [Guny].
[Guny] I would guess you'd be able to see lasers even before fog gets thick enough not to drive in.-- Worldgineer, Jun 04 2004 I'm not convinced that these would be visible from a greater distance than existing lights. Or is the idea just to have a cool light show?
(Also, since fog is often accompanied by wet roads, and wet roads are often reflective, angling lasers downwards would be a really bad idea.)-- kropotkin, Jun 04 2004 The idea is just to have a cool light show-- hippo, Jun 04 2004 random, halfbakery