Laser Pumpkin

Step 2: Attach a Diffraction Grating to your Laser.

We borrowed lasers from our partner Laserglow.com as they have an assortment of laboratory and alignment lasers in various colours and powers. If you don't have access to a stationary laser, a handheld laser with a higher power output will be effective. You will need to tape down the button if it does not have the ability for continuous operation. For this project we chose a blue, green and a red laser, although any colour will work; more colours will create a cooler Laser Pumpkin.

Attach a Diffraction Grating to each laser to create a scattered beam effect; the more beams, the better the effect. We used electrical tape to hold the Diffraction Grating holder to the laser. Diffraction Gratings that split a single laser beam into many beams including the Matrix, the Double Matrix and the Mega Matrix will be the best for this project, and they are available from Novalasers.com in the Optics section.

Comments

[ScienceWiz]

WOW I was super surprised when I looked at all of the optics at NovaLasers! Most sites only have a couple diffraction gratings and usually charge an arm and a leg... Great Instructable!! Really cool idea!