Every time I enter a building, they check my temperature by shooting my head with their magic temperature gun. What is this and how does it work ?
In: Physics
You know when a toaster is turned on it starts to glow, first faintly and then getting brighter? Everything glows like that all the time, but in a range of light we can’t see. The type of light you glow in correlates to how hot you are. The thermometer is just a camera that can detect these types of light and then convert that back into the temperature. Many shine a little laser on you, but this just tells the operator where they are aiming.
This temperature specific glow is called black body radiation.
They have a lens in them that focuses infrared light coming from your body into a detector on the device. When that light contacts the detector, it gets converted into heat, which then reads out on the device screen.
They don’t shoot anything. You are shooting out infrared rays and the machine focuses those rays into the detector. The rays hit the detector and produces heat which the thermometer displays.
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