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Old 23rd Oct 2008, 09:41
  #123 (permalink)  
theothersimon
 
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So let's do a calculation.

For a handheld laser pointed at an aircraft, let's work on the assumption that the eyeball is expose to the beam for 1/1000th of a second.

For visible light, for 1ms, the Maximum Permitted Exposure (MPE) flux is 0.01 W/cm2. (From IEC 60825)

For a laser with a beam angle of 1.5mrad (i.e. a very good narrow beam), the beam will spread by 3 feet for every 1000 feet travelled.

To make the maths easier, I'll round that to a 1m beam at 1000 feet.

Your pupil is defined at 0.39 cm2 = 0.000039 m2, so you will get 0.000012 (0.0012%) of the beam in your eye.

Working that backwards that means you will need 0.0256W of flux into your eyeball to cause damage, which will need a 2066W laser on the ground.

Now a 2kW laser is a bit beyond even ebay.

Or have I got the maths wrong again.

Simon.
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