Infrared is used in many different technologies ranging from a T.V. remote to a camera. They can detect heat leaks in house and even forest fires! Believe it or not, infrared is even used in damaged muscles to speed up healing and in thermography to detect pathological tissue growths.
Now that I've told you what infrared is used in, maybe I should tell you what it is. Infrared is one part of the electromagnetic spectrum and it's wave length is about the size of a grain of sand. Infrared is mainly heat or thermal radiation and that's mainly what we feel it as. Infrared affects matter in the form of heat. When infrared hits your skin, your skin warms up and that's how it affects any matter. Infrared is taken in and sent out by atoms or groups of atoms being vibrated and rotated. This means that when an infrared wave hits your skin, the atom in the wave is being vibrated or rotated and that's why you feel the heat.
A really big thing for infrared that a lot of people know about is infrared photography. In infrared photography you use a special type of film and camera that can sense the heat of an object. In infrared photos there are different colors used to show the hottest and coldest spots. In this cat photo below the hottest spots are in red and the lightest in white. This is just on of the ways they can use the colors. In some infrared photos they used the ROYGBV color skem, red being hottest and violet being coldest. These photos are not only used to just show the hottest part of a cat, they can be used to find people in a fire, and defects in electronic systems.
What's really interesting with Infrared is that it can show you things that aren't there. For example infrared can show you things at night that you can't see with night vision goggles. Why? because night vision goggles can't see behind a tree, but with an infrared device you can see the person because the person shows up red because of the heat he emits and the tree doesn't emit heat. Infrared Photos can also go beyond and show you things that aren't there. For some cool examples of infrared to regular photos click here.
For some cool infrared labs that you can try at home click here.
So I hoped you learned a lot and next time someone asks you or you hear about infrared you won't think it's a crayola color. I hope you'll be able to explain to them everything you read about from this blog.
Photos: from NASA
Works Cited:
"Electromagnetic Radiation." Encyclopædia Britannica. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Apr.
2010.
"The Infrared." NASA. N.p., 27 Mar. 2007. Web. 1 Apr. 2010.
"Infrared Light." Newton's Apple. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Mar. 2010.
7 comments:
Nice job. The blog overall was very easy to understand, and that is coming from someone knowing little to nothing about infrared waves. I liked the NASA hyperlink that allowed you to see more infrared photos.
Great blog, Natalie! I find it interesting that using an infrared device during the night you can see objects that normally would not be seen. Also, your links helped too.
Nice blog. It was very easy to understand, like erscienceblog said, and it was not to long and boring. I really liked the part about the infrared cameras. I think it is amazing how a camera can detect heat like that.
Good job! I liked your information! I am not sure if we were supposed to post on someone's with same topic or not but I did infrared too and yours was very good! You explained it very well. I also think it's interesting how infrared shows something that cannot be seen at night by the human eye. Good job!!
It was very easy to follow and also had good information. It makes me want to use one of those cameras to find all the hot and cold spots.
Just like you I knew bassically nothing about infared waves, but you did an exelent job explaining it and you had really good pictures.
I think it is really cool that you can see things with infrared that are behind other objects. Thanks for helping me understand this part of the EM spectrum.
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