For the obvious reasons, I invariably get too busy to blog exactly when things get interesting...
 Hot dogs, check. Laser goggles, check. |
 Not your ordinary campfire! |
Hot Dog!
No kidding. LaserMotive does not believe in wasting photons. If I’m going to make them fire the system at full power just to see that it does not melt, they are going to make lemonade, well, actually they are going to cook hot dogs.
After all, what tastes better (to a laser geek) than 808 nm cooked meat?
So yeah, to my astonishment, the BBQ roasting forks came out, as did two packages of hot dogs, and away we went. I’m glad to report that cooking was uneventful, and there wasn’t too much grease dripping.
As an aside, cooking a hot dog with a laser is not really much different than cooking it with an electric grill. The power level is comparable, the wavelength is a bit different (and so you want to wear protective goggles), and the toaster is just a bit more expensive, but otherwise there’s an on-off switch, a power dial, a bottle of Haynes, a bottle of Dijon, and squeeshy hot dog buns. There was no beer, even for guests.
As another aside, the laser is indeed invisible, but the camera captures it just fine – camera CCDs are sensitive to this wavelength. As a matter of fact, even the human eye captures a bit of it, but this is misleading – a faint red impression is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the total light intensity. Hence goggles are worn by everyone)
The official results of the test: need relish, otherwise ok.
Onwards to the climber melt test.