can TSL235R be used to estimate distance?

Hi folks, I'm absolutely new to the forum and Arduino world would really appreciate if you can help and teach me sth :slight_smile:
I was reading about this sensor here:

It says It out puts a square wave proportional to the light intensity. So if I have a laser emitter (1mW) am I able to use inverse-square law to estimate the distance of an object with it?
I can clearly see the leaser beam gets larger in the far field distance and did a bit study it seems real world lasers have "Laser irradiance"(not sure but I guess and I don't know the model of my laser but it is 1mW red laser AFAIK).

laser inverse square law

Could you please teach me a bit about why it is/is not possible?

Thank you so much :slight_smile:

I can understand your idea.
Varying ambient light will be a problem. The laser beem may be too bright when close. I think you will find this "not plactical", but give it a shot @$3