Yellow lasers and fluorescence

Whilst mucking around with my greenie, I noticed that shining it on certain fluorescent materials made them glow very brightly orange / deep yellow.



What's happening here? It's hard to see in the image due to the blooming, but there's a speckle pattern like laser light. Could a crystal with the same properties be used to alter the wavelength of the output of a greenie?

Wish I knew more physics...

The green light is kicking the electrons into a higher orbit, when they fall back they emit lower wavelength red light. Take a look at "Sams Laser FAQ" for answer to the rest. http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/lasersam.htm

Yellowish-orangish light cause the paper is reddish in color

I saw this too. One of my lava lamps has a very orange base, shining my greenie on it produces a very orange dot - but the light reflecting off the orange is still green as seen when it hits the wall.

When I'm wearing my red Smirnoff sunglasses, the green light from my Leadlight barely punches through, I can look right into the laser and see only a tiny bit of green light.... I 'm guessing 99% or better filtration of green. And of course, green is all there is. But yellow-red passes through much easier, and when I shine the laser around, the laser dot nearly always becomes visible, as most materials seem to fluoresce at least a bit in that range.

So I'd say that the frequency downconversion is the norm, and is often a significant contributor to the color of things.