Could you burn something by pointing 50 ordinary laser pointers at 1 spot?

Question

i saw a add on ebay for 100 wholesale laser pointers. if you grabbed a whole bunch of those and from like 5 feet away turned them on and pointed them at 1 spot could you potentialy make fire?

Answer 1

Try it!

Answer 2

http://www.quakekare.com/ProductImages/6...

Answer 3

I doubt that 50 could do it.  100, maybe.

Run-of-the-mill laser pointers tend to run at less than 1mW each.  It can be demonstrated that a 125mW laser could burn paper (see sources below).  So if the laser pointers were close to 1mW each, and you pointed 125 of them on the same spot, you'll probably see fire.  Less than that, I could not say, but it would surely be a worthy experiment!

Answer 4

it could.. if it produce enough heat energy and the spot u pointing at is easily combusted...