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Every good geek has played around with a laser pointer that has a red beam. You might have used one for work, to highlight and gesture when giving a PowerPoint talk. And to tease your cat or dog, make fun of your friends by planting a red dot in their forehead, and lots more fun things. But, let's face it! What's the point of owning a red laser pointer when everyone not only can have one, but they actually do? Even your grandmother has one, and she doesn't even "do" PowerPoint. So how do you rise to be top geek and impress your friends, furry or otherwise? Now, take a look at the new green laser pointers. And I'm not talking about that other kind of "green" where everyone is recycling their old newspapers. I'm talking about a cool new laser pointer that uses the far more powerful 532 nm wavelength; which, as any geek worth "his or her salt" knows, is tons better than the old 650 nm wavelength used by the red laser point. And, best of all, all that extra wavelength means it's really truly green. So if you got your kicks by using your old red laser beam to highlight things on a projection screen across the room, imagine how good you'll feel using a green laser pointer to highlight things that used to be out of reach. Because a green laser beam is more powerful than a red one, it can highlight clouds, low-flying aircraft, and even star constellations. Best of all, you can see the green laser beam outside during full sunlight. In fact, if you use this laser outside and happen to point it at an airplane, it's so powerful you could find yourself in a bit of trouble with the government because pointing a sighting device at a plane could get the feds investigating what other reasons you might have for pointing a powerful laser beam at planes. Can your old little red laser beam get you in that kind of trouble? Furthermore, the green laser pointer doesn't produce a tiny little spot. Oh no, it turns out that your green laser lets you see the whole beam as it travels to the stars. Think Luke Skywalker kinds of power! Are you beginning to see the possibilities here? To make a green laser pointer (and let's face it, only top geeks think about making their own laser pointers in the first place), it involves a whole new level of technology that makes the red laser pointer look so dull. The true green laser pointer requires a green direct injection laser diode, which is not available for public consumption. So, there's a whole complicated procedure involved here. (Caution: The next paragraph is for extreme techno-geek eyes only; everyone else can skip to the last paragraph.) The green laser pointers, available on the market today, all use Diode Pumped Solid State Frequency Doubled technology, aka DPSSFD, which is good news for everyone. Basically, this means that an infrared laser diode pumps out 808 nm, which is then altered to 1,064 nm, which is then shot into a crystal that doubles the frequency to produce the green beam at 532 nm. (It should go without saying, because only card-carrying geeks are reading this, which with frequency smaller numbers mean stronger.) So it is no wonder that green laser pointers are a must-have for the geek elite. While the green laser has been around a while, it's not so easy to find outside of technical settings (again, remember they can target airplanes). They're also not cheap. While you can pick up a red pointer for less than $10, a green one will set you back $50 or so, not out of reach, just not something you might purchase casually (or more to the point, something your grandmother won't purchase on the spur of the moment). Go on, you know you want one. Yeah, you know you really need one. What's stopping you?
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