 Hi everybody and welcome back to super science Saturday. We're so excited to have you here hybrid I'll introduce you in a bit. Thank you for joining us today We are using the Slido interface and if you slide down your website and if you've been here for a while You've already been familiar with it, but Slido is an interface if you click on Join you will be able to ask us some questions and also answer some polls that we have we're interested to learn where you're from How many of people are joining you watching today and I hope you've if you've been joining us since the morning We've had so much fun and I look forward to seeing what we're gonna do next. Aren't you? Yeah, so Britt, I'm gonna hand it over to you and your presentation is called infrared. It's out there Take it away Thanks, Lorena and thanks everyone for joining. My name is Britt Stevens I'm a scientist at NCAR and the main thing that I do here is study carbon dioxide as a gas in the atmosphere And that mostly entails building instruments that measure carbon dioxide and other gases and then taking them out on airplanes or ships or towers And by measuring carbon dioxide in different places we can try and figure out where it's coming from and where it's going to and The reason why I'm so interested in infrared radiation and also the reason why lots of people are interested in carbon dioxide is the carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation in the atmosphere and Causes the planet to be warmer than it would Otherwise and because we're emitting a lot of carbon dioxide from all our activities It's causing the planet to get even warmer. So with that introduction We made a video for you that explains infrared and shows you what some stuff I hope you think it's pretty cool. So I'm gonna share my screen and then show that to you Here we go Hi everybody today, I'd like to talk to you about infrared radiation. What is infrared radiation? Well, you may know it better as heat When you roast a marshmallow over a campfire the thing that makes that marshmallow really hot is Infrared radiation that's emitted by the coals of the fire and absorbed by the marshmallow Something you may not know is that infrared radiation is another form of light just like the light that comes from the Sun or from a flashlight Sir Isaac Newton who lived in England in the 1600s was the first person to figure out that the white light that comes from the Sun is Actually made up of all of the colors of the rainbow and he did this with a prism Which is a triangular piece of glass and I have one here. So let me show you what that looks like Okay So now I have this prism in a Sun beam and the Sun's shining through it and separating out all the colors of the rainbow another famous scientist a French woman named Emily de Châtelet in the 1700s was the first person to predict that there should be some form of radiation out here past the red and Then in 1800 another British scientist named Sir William Herschel was the first person to detect it And he did that by sticking a thermometer out here and he could see that it got warmer which proved that there was some form of invisible radiation heating it up And it's called infrared because Infra is Latin for underneath and it's underneath the red Nowadays we have really fancy cameras that are sensitive to infrared radiation and they're used for all sorts of things They're used for studying the Sun For taking pictures of gases in the atmosphere and around the home. They're used for checking your insulation and checking to see if there are any wires that might be too hot and I have one of the cameras That's used for that right here. It's tiny, but it's small because it's meant to plug into a cell phone So if I plug it into my cell phone like this and start filming You can see what that looks like Okay, now you should be looking through the infrared camera and The way it works is it measures the infrared radiation and from that it can tell how hot things are and then it shows you how hot Things are as different colors. So the hottest things in the picture are yellow and those are probably like my eyes And the coolest thing in the picture which might be the wall behind me are blues and On the left is a bar showing you what yellow and blue mean in terms of degrees Celsius and the scale just adjusts If you pointed at something hot, it'll shift the scale up and if you pointed something cool, it'll shift the scale down So you'll see that happen Now there's some surprising things that are transparent in infrared and some surprising things that aren't so for example a Black garbage bag, which we all know you cannot see through And I'll prove that like climbing into it is actually transparent in the infrared How many fingers am I holding up? It's actually transparent in the infrared how many fingers am I holding up? To on each hand so for Thank you very good And conversely Something like a pane of window glass, which we all know you can see through It's transparent and the visible But it's completely opaque or not see-through to the infrared and in fact it actually reflects Infrared so you can probably see my camera person wave camera person That's because a lot of window glass actually has a coating on it to reflect infrared in order to keep the heat inside your house Here's something fun. You can try it home. This is a remote control for a TV And it actually uses infrared radiation to send signals to the TV through that little it looks like a light bulb there Now it turns out that some modern cameras are actually Sensitive to this infrared which is just outside the range of the visible My cell phone camera, which I'm using right now isn't so if I take this and point it at the camera And try and turn the TV on and off you don't see anything which is exactly what I see in real life But if I turn my camera around And use the face camera on the phone and do the same thing when I push the on-off button You see this bright kind of pink light and that's actually infrared that's fooling the camera into thinking It's actually a visible color. So maybe after this you can borrow Remote control and a cell phone from your parents and see if you can see it, too Be sure to try both cameras the back and the front Now that I've told you a bit about infrared radiation I just want to walk around the house and with this infrared camera and see what some things look like sound like fun Let's go I can see your booo Ooh, hot feet What did we find here? I want to know what it is. There's a puppy dog Who knows is much warmer than the rest of his body and he's even made the bed warm Where he was laying sorry to wake you up What's this over here? Cool the plant is Actually cooler than the rest of the room and that's because it evaporates water off of its surfaces What in the world is that? Okay, we have a pole set up for you so that you can guess what this is Stare at it for a second and think about what you think it might be And then Lorena if you can put the pole up see what our options are Yeah, so this is a really curious one. It's really cool to be able to walk around your house So it's something in your house Maybe Okay, the choices are Indiana Jones whip. We've seen those movies. You know what that is a pet snake an electric teapot or a hose and It's really cool to see as people are putting in their responses how these responses are changing I'm sure we've all been looking at a lot of poles I Mean like maybe if you dressed up as Indiana Jones for Halloween Looks like a hose is winning Tricky one wonder what the hose would have in it Look that yellow What do you and if you haven't already participated you could join Slido by going down on the bottom part of your of Your web browser your window and you can join Slido and participate in this active pole What do you think should we show people what it actually is? Should I take a guess as well. Oh, yeah, please do I Totally think it's your pet snake that might have been walking around the house by walking I mean, you know slithering of course Yeah, but can you guess the pet snake's name? That's extra credit If it is a pet snake, I will guess a name Do you want to show the results you are okay, I'm gonna share my screen again And here we go It's a teapot With a cold glass of water sitting next to how about we put some in All right, let's see what that looks like Oh Look the hot water is staying sort of on top of the cold water Let's put a little more All right, here goes You did that, why didn't you do that? Okay, these two kids say the chocolate chip cookies have cooled off enough to eat. Let's have a look Hmm, let me see. Come stare at the camera. Do you think those cookies have cooled off enough? Fire Well, let's find out if we can have one Chocolate chip cookies are missing. I wonder who ate them. Okay, stick out your tongue Stick out your tongue. Let me see. Let me see. Oh, it's got a hot tongue. Let me see Guilty as charged Okay, let's put some water in the bath It's like a cold bath Let's see what that looks like We should add some hot water Mix it up It's got all the cold out Let me stir it up now Oh, yeah, that's a nice temperature Actually, you know what? I think that might be a little bit too hot What do we do about that? What if we put some ice cubes in there? Oh boy, there's ice cubes in there Oh man, this is gonna make this really nice Oh my Why don't you hop in, Byron? You ready? No It looks like it's just the right temperature No Wow, those videos were cool I hope you can tell we had fun filming them And I hope you now realize that infrared is all around us We actually use infrared radiation all the time in science On the NCAR research aircraft, I operate an instrument that includes an infrared sensor for measuring carbon dioxide And we've flown that all the way from the North Pole to Antarctica Other scientists at NCAR use infrared to study the sun With pictures like this one that show all of the flares and other features on the surface And other scientists we work with use infrared cameras on airplanes To look for methane leaks in natural gas facilities Like this one, because methane absorbs infrared It shows up dark in this image And it makes these leaks really easy to spot Well, that's our show I hope you enjoyed it But before we go, we just have one more infrared camera video to show you See you later The Comet doggy that you also had on camera So, yeah, we had a lot of fun making that I had a couple helpers And I'm happy to take questions I also have the infrared camera hooked up and I can share the screen also If anybody wants me to point it at anything Or just use the infrared Yeah, we'll do that I think it was just so cool that you had the black plastic bag And of course, you know, safety first Never go into plastic bag without supervision And being able to see you through that infrared It felt like you were just, it was just amazing Yeah, the first time I saw somebody do that online It kind of blew my mind, I just wasn't expecting it at all Yeah, that's so cool And I think that question was a trick question Because if I would have guessed it was a teapot Cable, I totally would have gotten it right But thank you so much So let's go ahead and see who are asking questions And we have Checho and Kai and Amaya Thank you so much for staying throughout the day We had the question Can we use infrared vision to look for people Buried in avalanches Wow, that is a great question I had never thought about that You know, I know a little bit about avalanches Because I go in the mountains in the winter And I'm worried about them I think that the snow and the water would absorb All the infrared and you probably wouldn't see them But we played, we had this camera It's actually, you know, NCAR owns the camera But I have it on loan And so we played hide and seek the other day And it makes it really easy to find somebody Hiding, say in a closet Or somebody hid under a bed And I could see the carpet was warm Where they crawled under So that was really good I also, another cool thing they use Infrared forest flying over forest fires They can actually see through smoke So if you want to tell the forest fires Exactly where the fire is You can fly over and look down And you see right through the smoke And can tell where the fires are So that's kind of similar to the avalanche idea Yeah, definitely has some applications For firefighters to help them As they navigate, especially this season And, you know, the seasons that have passed Across the world, even Australia Like to be able to see beyond the clouds Definitely important Thank you for answering that question Let's see What is another question from NASA Why do we need infrared rays Everywhere? Yeah, you know, it would be hard to say That they're there, maybe they're there Because we need them, we don't know But they do a lot of things That we count on Like make the planet warm enough to live in So that's really great You know, before people knew about them They thought all there was The colors of the rainbow From red through violet And it never really occurred to anybody There would be anything else But once scientists started learning about infrared And studying it, they realized that That's how we stay warm And I think probably lots of things in nature Are sort of depending on being able to Sense heat from different directions Snakes can kind of Tell where their prey is by sensing the heat Things like that That's amazing how nature just can help itself I play Dungeons and Dragons And you know, I have like characters Who can see in the dark But this is different, this is infrared So being able to see the heat signatures That's awesome Let's see We have a question from Genevieve Should we go to that one The question is, do clouds glow In the infrared Glow in the infrared light They do, that's also a great question You know, I took this camera And I tried pointing it outside of the clouds And because they're so high in the air They're actually really cold So the camera tells you that It shows them sort of this blue or black Because it says, oh, that's something really cold But if you were looking from space What you would see is that the clouds that were down low Are a lot warmer than the clouds up high So they would be radiating more infrared And actually that has a big impact On how warm the whole planet is If you have clouds down low or they're warm They can emit a lot of infrared light Out to space to cool us off And if you have clouds up high Covering everything, they are really cold And they actually don't emit as much And that actually gives us warmer So that's a great question And we have a question from Nigel That asks, where can I buy infrared glasses Is that a thing to get infrared glasses? You know, they have, they definitely have What they call night vision glasses Which they use the infrared Just like this camera But they present it a little bit differently You might have seen movies Where they have kind of, it's almost like black and white But it's black and green So the light is all sort of greenish And so yeah, they saw those lots of places I imagine they're quite expensive I don't own any But people use those if they need to be You know, an emergency situation Say you're going into a burning building And they want to find people They have glasses like that Yeah, what would be really neat I think Is something that just allowed you to see the infrared Kind of with your own eyes And you know, you don't need to have An extra color But I don't know if they have those It'll be interesting I mean, there's a lot of science to be had out there With new scientists coming along And everybody watching here Is a scientist already with all this curious question So definitely thank you for answering that question And I think the next question I actually was wondering Prefacing the question So you showed a video That was at the very end And it was the heat of a blow dryer And while the blow dryer was on Like, you know, there was air coming out And it was hot air But I wasn't able to see it Until you put it on the floor So this question by Jeremy is If it is Oh, I think it was essentially Like, there's, by Terry Sorry about that But it was a question about being able to see Any gas that's heat Can you actually see that? Or does it have to be on an object Just like how you had it He saw a video of animals fighting Joe Hacker had a science show here About a month ago Where he showed some videos like that They were really funny I tried to figure out If that was the hot air coming out That was being seen Or if it was the methane coming out That was absorbing heat And I think the camera I have here Is not sensitive enough to see Warm air versus cold air Because there just aren't that many Even though it's hot air Not that many molecules in air Or medium infrared It can see warm surfaces And things like that I need to go back and watch that video Because it could have been just like that Picture I showed of the methane Leaking out of those tanks With the plane flying over It might have been that That the methane came out and absorbed And for that you need an infrared camera At the specific wavelengths That methane absorbs And the little cameras like this Are kind of designed to see To not be sensitive to gases So you get a good measure Of what you're looking at So with a fancy enough camera I think you could see it And I think it would look really cool That's awesome Thank you for answering that question I think it's very important To draw the difference Between different types of gas That are in our atmosphere And ways that scientists Use different technologies To be able to identify those gases Around Earth as well And it's a similar question That Jeremy had So I think for the interest of time Since we're at 256 I'm going to go over to Griffin If that's okay with you And the question was Are there more colors Like infrared That we might see? Yeah, and I just saw I'm going to just do this Because Jeremy's question reminded me I'm going to try and share this The infrared camera video While I answer this question See if this comes up Okay, I will try and answer This question in infrared Yes, there are lots The electromagnetic spectrum They call it goes from Way out past infrared Way through red, orange, yellow, green, blue Indigo violet And then past violet is ultraviolet Which will give you a sunburn If you get too much of it And then it keeps going on So if you Google Or maybe Lorena can share a link About the electromagnetic spectrum There's lots of other things Radio waves, television signals That used to come through the air Those are all just different forms Of light basically That we can't see And then to answer Jeremy's question It is kind of tricky with this camera If you want to take a picture of something On your table and you accidentally Put your hand there first Then what you're left with is a hand print And so people are giving off heat But this camera is not quite sensitive To see it coming off It mostly just sees the heat coming off Yeah, that was a good question also Yeah, thank you so much for being able to take that Sorry, I wasn't able to read it out But it was about being able to see that heat signature Without the obstruction of a body So it's essentially seeing the remnants Of where that person had just previously touched Awesome, thank you so much For sharing in the infrared I think we have about two minutes Before the next show starts But I did want to see I think Sean or Natalie If you can please post up the questions again Just to see if we had anything That we can answer real quick And then maybe looking up on Amazon For the infrared camera That might be a question for you all Out there to check out Since I know you mentioned This was a camera that was provided For this particular program So thank you so much, Dan For asking that question Just real quick We use infrared thermometers To take our temperature every day Is it bad for our body to do so? No, it's not That's just like an infrared camera So it's just seeing What's coming off of your body So it's not bad at all You know exactly how much these cameras cost But they're getting less expensive all the time This one is maybe Several hundred dollars Great And also same question about But with our cell phones Emitting that infrared or like the remote control It's very minimal, I'm assuming Yeah, so electromagnetic waves Are dangerous when they have High energy and short wavelengths So that's the other end Ultraviolet and out past there Like The radioactive stuff That you might get that could hurt you So infrared is long wavelength And it's not enough energy So it's safe Great, well with that I would like to say thank you so much, Britt For taking the time to share with us About infrared And thank you everybody for asking All those wonderful, amazing questions I know there's more questions out there And I hope that we can continue these conversations Throughout the year Thanks Britt, we're going to post up Real quick the schedule If that's okay to do And then we're just going to get started For the next show, see you soon Bye bye Bye