Mike Murphy's Blog

Whilst chatting to a young lady about her laser hair removal issues, I thought of a better way to explain why treatments often don’t work. I realised that we need to visualise the skin as a sequence of ‘zones’ – the ‘kill’ zone where the hairs will always be successfuly destroyed; the ‘stun’ zone where… Continue reading The ‘kill-stun-null’ zones in laser/IPL hair removal – why some treatments don’t work…

I was recently asked by a lovely bunch of ladies to train them in the use of their laser, for hair removal. They all had the same device and were all having some difficulties in achieving good results. They had all been trained by their supplier’s trainers, but felt that they were not getting the… Continue reading Why is suppliers’ training so dismal?

Laser safety glasses must show some information on what they are supposed to protect your eyes against. This must include the wavelength(s) and the protection levels. These are to ensure that your eyes are fully and properly protected during laser procedures. This post will explain the markings you should see on our laser safety glasses.… Continue reading Laser Safety Glasses and how to ‘read’ them.

I have put together a new site to gather my various scribblings, blog posts, videos and animations etc, into one place. You can visit it here – https://www.scribblings.info I will add various bits and pieces into it from time to time. Hope you find it useful, Mike.

Last post of 2023. If you look at a river, you will quickly realise that the water flows at different speeds depending on where you’re looking. Near the river banks it usually flows quite slowly, whereas it will typically flow much faster near the centre, if unimpeded. A closer inspection reveals that the currents in… Continue reading Time is not constant – not in our universe

The great physicist, Richard Feynman, once said that if you claim to understand quantum physics, then you don’t understand quantum physics. Anyone who has studied it will tell you that it is bizarre, unfathomable and completely counter-intuitive. One of the strange issues is the wave-particle duality of fundamental ‘particles’ such as electrons and photons. When… Continue reading Waves or particles – the conundrum in Quantum Physics

When light enters the skin the photons immediately encounter atoms and molecules. With each encounter there is a probability that each photon will be either absorbed or scattered. The skin is a highly scattering medium, so the probabilities of scattering are usually much greater than the probability of being absorbed (in most events). Some of… Continue reading How does fluence vary with depth in the skin?

Something a bit different this year. With a pumpkin. And a laser… Incidentally, no pumpkins were harmed in the making of this video. Apart from that one, of course… Me bad, Mike.