Odd question...movie Real Genius equipment

[ks_physicist]

In the movie Real Genius, what are the little test cells that the characters repeatedly fire lasers into?

I assume they are laser power sensing devices, but I haven't been able to locate information about them. You can kind of see one on the right edge of this image:

(In this scene, I think the test cell 'blows up' as they gather the power data.)

So, any idea what it is actually called? I do not think it is an invented movie prop, I think I have seen them somewhere before...

 

[AJ_Dual]

They played fast and loose with what exactly it was they were doing with the laser, but generally they were cells of gas that either were supposed to re-lase at other wavelengths (like the crystals in current solid-state green pointers do), or they were actualy a chemical fuel mixture that was supposed to re-lase at an even higher power once excited by the original pump-laser.

 

[ks_physicist]

Ah. I thought perhaps they were a common but outdated (or uncommon, high-power) style of laser power meter, perhaps water absorption calorimetry.