Laser Safety Officer Training Monday, Aug 22 after SELEM. Interested?

[ildadirect]

My personal opinion -- not ILDA's opinion -- is that there is not much demonstrated need for a laser license or operator variance.

This is based on the experience of 30 years of audience scanning overseas, where the number of injuries or problems appears to be negligible compared with the number of persons exposed.

This is also based on US "illegal" laser operators who don't seem to be blinding persons despite the MANY audience scanning shows we know that go on in the U.S.

My personal suggestion is to leave CDRH regulations the way they are. Only instead of having to file in advance and saying "yes, here are our diagrams of how the shows is done", simply say that all U.S. laser shows must follow CDRH regulations. If a show is found to be not following regulations, then the person would be fined or jailed as is normally done now. (E.g., nothing will happen more than a slap on the wrist...)

All this does is level the playing field. Right now, conscientious laserists are jumping through unnecessary hoops to file show variance paperwork. This puts them at a disadvantage relative to the many laser operators who do "illegal", non-varianced shows (or varianced shows that exceed the variance restrictions).

I think the current show variance system is largely unnecessary, relative to more important public health efforts that the FDA needs to be doing. Leave the regs the same (3 meter rule, etc.) but simply say "laserists must follow this" and if an inspection or a complaint shows that a laserist is not following them, then penalize the person the exact same way as if they had filed and then violated a variance.

Again, this is my personal suggestion and views, and does not reflect anything related to ILDA. Dan Goldsmith and the new ILDA Regulatory Committee will be working on ILDA's official policy as their time permits.

-- Patrick

[flecom]

that seems logical... so I'm guessing it will never happen lol

no but seriously that does make sense... here are the rules, follow them or else...

the variance does not automatically mean you are following the rules anyway... I have seen varianced equipment used improperly (below 3M, pointed at audience etc) so it seems like a bunch of paperwork for nothing...

ah well, its a rant for another thread...

regardless, thanks for doing the whole ILDA "LSO" thing, I know I appreciated learning some new things, and verifying that my preexisting knowledge was correct for the most part...

[ildadirect]

I appreciate the nice words. Sometimes verifying pre-existing knowledge is a very valuable thing <g!>.

[Bradfo69]

For example, you could know it is (approximately) 186,000 miles per second -- I assume everyone knows this offhand -- and then do calculations to find out how many centimeters is in 186,000 miles. Or you could go online and google "speed of light in cm per sec" and Google's returns the answer as the first result: "the speed of light = 29 979 245 800 centimeters per second."

So this is testing some creativity or research ability.

In going over the scores with Greg, one thing I wanted to be sure of was that there was a clear delineation in the scores between passing and not passing. There was -- clearly there were two groups. So this was another indicator to me that the questions were helping to distinguish those who "got it" from those who had some trouble.

If you don't pass, you can take it in the next two years for free, since our goal is not course fee income but educated laserists.

Interestingly, I Googled it during the exam and the resulting answer didn't appear to match any on the exam but, oh well. I REALLY wish I could have stayed to review the answers but, as it was, after a long weekend and long day in the classroom, with the knowledge of 550 miles of late driving ahead I couldn't justify waiting around another 1/2 hour. I would have loved to debate or at least get answers to questions I feel could have had more than one correct answer.

Still, all in all a very worthwhile experience and one that I hope to repeat within two years but, I can assure you of one thing, I'm 46 years old and will not go back to community college or otherwise to sit through a semester of algebra to prep for next time so, the math related bonus questions will probably go out the window again. Although, if we get the power point slides someday, I'll have my math wiz college age son explain the specific formulas to me and how to get an answer. He tried after the test but my handwritten attempt at copying those symbols off the board at the speed with which Greg changed them was futile.

[ildadirect]

Brad, as a math averse person myself, one thing you can do is familiarize yourself with some online laser safety calculators. There are at least two that I know of. Knowing the right inputs and what to do with the outputs is more important than being able to do the calculations by hand.

-- Patrick

[beamann]

Hey guys,
for the FOUR of us who did not pass this "test of brought in Knowledge" BOGGUS, Lets form a study group and test, test, test, and learn the hand calculations, as well as this on line laser calculater, witch my computer would not down load it for me to use during class test time and as for "what part of the EYE dose the thermal cooling" how is that general incomeing knowledge to be tested? I can see The diameter of the pupil being important and far I.R. and near I.R. how it burns the EYE on the coniea, so If I custom build a pair of T.E.C. eye glasses I can now live a life long dream of aimlesly stare into the sun with cool Eyes.
Compaints over with now,
Any body interested in a L.S.O. retest prep study group?

[Bradfo69]

Remember Emory... the point of that question could have been to demonstrate to the proctors that you are smart enough to know how to Google something. Not necessarily anything to do with what we were taught pertaining to laser safety. (We KNOW if it's on the internet, then it must be true an accurate.)

I'd really have preferred demonstrating that I understood and retained what Greg taught us as well.

I'm lookng forward to a retest though. Maybe San Antonio next year.

[beamann]

Remember Emory... the point of that question could have been to demonstrate to the proctors that you are smart enough to know how to Google something. Not necessarily anything to do with what we were taught pertaining to laser safety. (We KNOW if it's on the internet, then it must be true an accurate.)

I'd really have preferred demonstrating that I understood and retained what Greg taught us as well.

I'm lookng forward to a retest though. Maybe San Antonio next year.

I am pretty shure that was sarcastic, I googled the coolent Eye thing and read it to death during the test, and what I got was that The Vetrious membraine has the biggest blood vessels and blood flow, well I saw volume blood flow (coolent) as the methode of "EYE" cooling, So selected the matching test answer, WRONG!
I have had Instructors in the Navy, Electronis (HTI), SW Truck driving school, and Flight school. Few very few need to show how smart they are, rather than teach. I have never been able to aford collage at any level, State granted trade schools has been my education, The math in Electronics school was un belivable but compaired to the LSO class It might as well been "for your eyes only ENCRIPTION" Basic colladge level math my ass! Of corse I didn't do so well in the higher level of math in Electronics school either!
What Greg (in information) gave us, If tested on that alone, I might have passed the test, the math would have been my chalange. I have "Discalcula" (wicth is worse than "dislexiya") learning disability and greatly effects Math, Navagation, Spelling to menchen a few. I have been always the one that had to work extra, extra hard to pass anything, This LSO being no excception, It would be nice to know what all medical certs, and astro physics I need to have down so I can pass It! Buffo has both of those skills and I bet he practicaly ACED the test, I knew he passed it that day, He's a smart one.
Dose anybody know of an APP that I can down load to my phone to do laser calculations or how to wright one?

[flecom]

well, a lot of college "teaching" isnt so much, heres some information, memorize it, regurgitate it on a test... its more of a "heres how you look for information using various tools"... most of the time your left to figure out that bit on your own tho