"Asimov" wrote in message
...

One thing I've discovered about laser pointers is that the chip area
is purposely constructed so that it is impossible to collimate the
beam to make it into a dangerous device. What I think happens is that
there are multiple lasing areas which are slightly out of phase with
each other. When one tries to concentrate the beams onto a very tiny
spot they tend to subtract from each other and cancel out.

I suspect that if the 'point' was finer it would make a worse pointer.

N