Bend a Laser Beam - Learn How It's Done

[Omid]

Bending a laser beam ?!

I was surfing the web when I encountered this photo:

http://www.ieav.cta.br/soldagem/LASER%20verde.gif

I can only read English and Persian, unfortunately the page was in another language I can't get even a word of it. Anyway I'm badly interested to know a bit about the picture.
What is it? A laser? How did they bent it this way?
Please help me to know that. For God's sake

 

[DougBTX2]

Looks like a fiber optic to me :)

 

[jq]

Yes, it looks like fiber optics cable

 

[Amauta2K]

The page is in Portuguese, a brazilian site about special welding processes. The page doesn't say anything of the picture...

The name of the image (LASER verde.gif) means "green laser". But yes it looks as a fiber optic.

 

[Omid]

Oh my!
You know how many jilions of different thought have been at the top of my head? I thought of anything except this one, the most obvious thing.
Thanks God. I didn't go to library in order to research about "Bending Laser Beams". :D

Thank you very much. You saved me a great deal of time.

 

[Adrian Baker]

You can bend a laser beam though - we do it in the lab.

Make up a saturated salt solution and put it about an inch and a half deep in a see-through water tank (such as a fish tank). Then, VERY CAREFULLY, fill the tank up through a rubber U tube that has its opening pointing upwards at the water surface level. Add a little flouroscene (or milk powder) to the water to make it show up later on..

If you do this well enough, you get a solution with mostly water, floating on top of salt solution. You then point a laser beam at the tank and the beam can be pointing slightly up as it enters, but then bend right down to the bottom of the tank!

Fantastic experiment that always gets gasps and wows from the pupils at our College!

 

[Integral]

You can bend a laser beam though - we do it in the lab.

Make up a saturated salt solution and put it about an inch and a half deep in a see-through water tank (such as a fish tank). Then, VERY CAREFULLY, fill the tank up through a rubber U tube that has its opening pointing upwards at the water surface level. Add a little flouroscene (or milk powder) to the water to make it show up later on..

If you do this well enough, you get a solution with mostly water, floating on top of salt solution. You then point a laser beam at the tank and the beam can be pointing slightly up as it enters, but then bend right down to the bottom of the tank!

Fantastic experiment that always gets gasps and wows from the pupils at our College!

I have done this with a sugar solution, if the conditions are correct the beam will under go a total reflection off of the bottom of the container and will exit on a path that is the mirror image of the entrance path... That is way cool!