Remember back in the day, sitting in science class thinking to yourself, “I will never use this”? Surely, subjects dealing with light, energy and wavelengths were for scientists and people like Bill Nye to study. Well, the day of reckoning has come. That high school science class that required the very best of your attention skills is now coming to beneficial fruition. It turns out that a basic knowledge of light and energy can go a long way in understanding the technology behind Thermal Imaging Technology.

Light has energy and shorter wavelengths of light translate into greater energy. There are various kinds of light. The light you and I are familiar with, the kind we see every day is known as visible light. The colors we see fall in this category, with red being the lowest energy light. Just shy of red light is infrared light, light we cannot see. Within this category is thermal infrared light.

When Thermal Imaging Cameras capture an image, they capture the thermal infrared light emitted from an object. That light is captured and translated into a complex temperature reading or pattern. This temperature reading goes through a process and is then translated into data that can be organized into the image you and I see. Though seemingly complex, this process miraculously takes fractions of a second.