Infrared Camera Dorkery

A commonly used instrument in my field is the infrared camera--it measures the heat emitted from objects to create an image that shows how hot surfaces are--i.e., "Predator-cam" (for those of you familiar with 1980's Arnold Schwartzenneger movies). We recently bought one (from FLIR), and I got to take it for a test spin--man, I know I'm a great big dork, but it's a whole lot of fun.

For instance, here's an interior shot of one of our offices--there's a ceiling heating duct (or register) in front of the windows.


And with the heating system on, you can totally see the two "plumes" of heated air impinging on the wall and window.


This front shot of our office shows the relative heat loss--note, as I have previously ranted about that the windows the places where lots of heat is leaking out.


But also, you'll notice that there's a bright bar at the tops of the second floor windows--at least the middle and right hand ones. I took a closer look in that office... turns out, huh, the carpenters left off any weatherstripping from the tops of those two windows.


Wow--pretty useful! Fixed now.

Also, I had to try out a self-portrait--it turns out that infrared is reflected quite well in a mirror. I call this one, "Go ahead, make my day."


Yeah. Dorkery. Yeah.