A friend and i have a debate over a commercial that has been airing recently. Perhaps you have seen it. It is a commercial for a laser level. The commercial claims that the laser will even bend around corners. It only shows one leveler to accompish this. I believe that this is possible with lasers. If indeed it were impossible the commercial would either have been revised, taken off the air, or the company would have been sued for false advertising. I can't seem to find anything on such a specific subject. Is there anyone that can solve this debate. Please provide an explanation and links if possible. Thanks a bunch.
ooo, my area. Light will not bend unless it passes an optical boundary. This is a boundary of two refractive indicies. Such as when light passes into water from air. There are ways to bend light under extreme conditions, such as intense gravitational fields. Though I doubt this product comes with a minature black hole. I think its far more likely that this product comes with a mirror and a stand. I did a quick search on google to check theres not a huge optics concept ive missed and i cant find one. I turns out Maxwell was right after all.
look on this products website and see if it goes into details, id be interested. But light travels in straight lines, its one of the things you learn at school that doesnt really turn out to be wrong later, except as I say under extreme conditions. Laser light travels in very straight linesdue to the collimated nature of its emission, which is why its used for very accurate measurements, the beam doesnt widen with distance.
-They just spin around real fast so it looks like a line. -Its like if ya took a flashlight and stood in the middle of a 4 way hallway intersection and spun around real fast shinin your light on down the 4 hallways in a circular motion, the line would seem to bend around the outside corners if ya spun around fast enoughf to make it look like a solid line.
I think in the commercial in little letters during the "bend around corners" shot it says that you have to point the lazer at the corner.
still though the appearture would need to be of the same order as the wavelength of light. Im finding it hard to imagine a corridor with a width measured in nm. By the time you get to everyday sizes diffraction of light through say a doorway is negligable.
In the US there are a couple of competing products both that show the laser line hugging the wall as it "bends" around the corner. I did not see any small print in the ad. But is this not similar to the scanner used in the supermarket to read the bar-code on products?
-Its like Shaggie said, the ones the poster's talkin about spin around real fast and put out a plane of light. -The light that it puts out that you can see because it hits the wall -dose appear to bend around the corner.
A bar code scanner works by having a little piezo-electric oscillator called a bi-morph. You stick a little mirror on it and reflect laser light off it as it vibrates. However I assure you that no light is being bent. Sorry Shaggie, didnt meant to imply you didnt know what you were talking about, just clarifying the point.
Dont you think that maybe instead of being like: corner on outside > ------ beam it could be like: corner on inside L ------ beam I think they're bullshitting
Either: A) It comes with the mirror and stand thing, and they don't exactly want to show the bulky thing in the commercial. or B) To make it "bend" around a corner, you have to place it not along the wall, but perpendicular to the corner, so that the flat plane of laser light shines on the wall on both sides of the corner, if that makes sense. That's all there is to it, I don't see any other way.
