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The Cheese Slicing Laser

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the sign-me-up dept.

purduephotog writes "Xiaochun Li of The University of Wisconsin-Madison has come up with the ultimate gift for those high-tech wine and cheese connoisseurs: A cheese slicing laser. More detailed information is available at Optics.Org."

5 of 337 comments (clear)

  1. Gold-fingahhhh by ThePretender · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Now I want one! All I can think of is reenacting the scene from Goldfinger where they attempt to kill Bond with the laser that would slice him up the middle starting with his naughty bits. The plan is foiled (of course) but you get the idea!

  2. fast food industry by perly-king-69 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    "One motivation is the ability to cut cheese into fancy shapes that appeal to kids, such as a dinosaur or letters. The fast food industry is very interested in that idea."

    Nice. And people wonder why US obesity rates are so high?

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  3. Why only cheese? by addie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm no laser expert, but by the description in the article, it sounds like this kind of technology could be applied to all sorts of food. If it isn't actually burning a slice, but rather "blasting" the molecules apart, couldn't it be used for meat, bread, whatever else has similar issues with bacteria?

    Seems to me the higher energy costs in these factories would be offest by the gain in work hours that would have before been used for cleaning, disinfecting, sharpening, replacing etc of the blades.

  4. Re:Interesting Idea by the_mad_poster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You're obviously not accustomed to the arbitrary, uninformed outrage expressed by the typical U.S. muttonhead... er... citizen.

    We've got people screaming bloody murder about "frankenfood" who learned everything they know about genetics from "The Hulk" and "Spiderman". They SHOULD be screaming for studies, they ARE screaming for a ban.

    I'd be surprised if someone DOESN'T try to outlaw this or classify it as a military weapon or something similarly idiotic. "Somebody think of the children!" they'll scream as kids keep shining laser pointers in each others' eyes as a "joke".

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  5. Re:Bets by Jerf · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The first consumer laser..

    Two things:

    First, why not open up one of your CD-ROM, DVD, Gamecube, other optical drive and see what's in there? Or look at the many laser pointers and derivative products on the market? Way too late for "first consumer laser".

    Second, who said this is consumer? Only the Slashdot summary, as far as I can tell. It sounded to me like pure industry use only, because it's slow, so slow it's not even useful to the industry in the present form. So it's not even a "consumer laser".

    Well, at least you got "laser" right... ;-)