Laser Light Shows Replace Fireworks

July 3 -- This Fourth of July, fewer communities out West will be "oohing" and "ahh-ing" beneath sizzling fireworks shows.

Instead, many will be watching a more modern version of patriotic displays — laser light shows set to programmed music. The computerized animations, which are directed into the sky or at oversized mesh screens, use highly focused lasers that are far less likely to spark a fire in the dry tinderbox-like terrain of Western states.

Colorado and Arizona have endured the largest wildfires in each state's history this year and officials are taking extra precautions to keep fire risks low.

High Demand

"We have been flooded with phone calls," says Rikki Rothenberg-Klein, vice president for sales at Laser Fantasy International, a Seattle-based laser show company. "For many communities, this offers a very very safe way to put on a show."

Rothenberg-Klein says her company has had to turn down requests and is producing twice as many shows than last year. It's handling spectacles in Sonora, Calif., Helena, Mont., and two in Colorado, where firework displays were banned this year because to wildfire concerns.

Bob Tory of Minneapolis-based Lasertainment says the laser show company has enjoyed a significant "bump in demand." And at South Dakota's Mount Rushmore, the usual brilliant fireworks show will be replaced by a laser display.

Instead of relying on black powder to create bright displays, laser light shows use mirrors, gas or crystals and agitated atoms.

Agitated Atoms

John Neese, an engineer at the University of Michigan's Center for Ultrafast Optical Science, explains light show lasers, which are highly focused beams of light with similar wavelengths, are usually generated within a tube of inert gas, such as argon or krypton.

A high-voltage current is directed through the tube, which agitates the atoms that make up the gas. The atoms eventually return to their normal state and as they do, they release energy in the form of photons — or light.