I know lasers are able to retrieve data (HDD, laser distance meters, optic telescopes etc.) but how does one do it? Let’s take distance meter as an example, let’s say I want to measure how far away I am from a wall. No wall is 100% smooth, so when I point a laser beam into it it should bounce off in some unkown place due to rigidness of the wall. I mean as far as I am concerned laser beam should bounce off of the wall and go back to the detector, and it does its magic and it somehow knows how long did the light traveled. But rigidness of the wall should make it bounce somwhere (angle of incidence equal to the angle of reflection).
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For distance measurement that doesn’t require crazy accuracy, the laser beam will turn off briefly for the measurement. A small camera will capture the time it takes for the laser to reappear. Knowing the speed of light, and a bright red laser is easy to spot, it’s not hard.
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