high powered hand held lasers

[dragonstar57]

is it possible to make a hand held laser capable of burning through metal (3-4 in thick) and concrete (2-3 in thick) and if not, why not

[swansont]

Your limitation is going to be supplying energy to the laser. If you want to melt through steel, which is going to take about .5 J/gK, and that will require getting it to about 1300-1500 ºC, so that's maybe 700J/g and you want to melt through tens of grams, so maybe 20kJ of absorbed energy is required. If the reflectivity is 50% and laser efficiency is 50%, you need to supply a minimum of 80kJ of energy. You could do that with a 1 kg battery. The discharge rate so you can melt the steel quickly will be the limitation, since I've ignored any heat losses from the target, and that rapidly becomes a bad assumption.

[dragonstar57]

so would a car battery work?

how large wold the power souse be?

plese remove comment

Edited October 22, 2010 by cipher510

[dragonstar57]

so what would be the specs of such a power source?

ie. amps/watts etc.?

and what would you say the weight/volume of the most compact/light of a power sourse such as this one useing todays technology in a releastic situiation?

ie.acounting for power loss and cooling

Edited October 23, 2010 by cipher510