Uses for IR Laser pointer

 
If you shine an IR laser pointer on a tooth, the tooth lights up, revealing
cavities and fillings, perhaps as nonradioactive imaging. The IR laser
pointer also lights up cavities in various nonliving materials, perhaps
revealing their depths. I recently bought a flashlight with UV & IR LEDs
(search shopping.google.com for <UV IR LED>).  because I was interested in a
cheap way to image building problems (UV shows moisture, IR shows heat leaks,
but in this case it lights them up.). Certainly it is no replacement for a
thermal imager worth thousands of dollars or a tooth x-ray, but might it, in
some cases, be "appropriate technology"?

                    - = -
 Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist
   http://www.panix.com/~vjp2/vasos.htm   http://www.facebook.com/vasjpan2
  ---{Nothing herein constitutes advice.  Everything fully disclaimed.}---
   [Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards]
 [Urb sprawl confounds terror] [Phooey on GUI: Windows for subprime Bimbos]

  On Oct 10, 5:46 pm, vjp2...@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com wrote:

I dont think so, a tv remote is IR and it lights nothing, IR is a
spectrum you cant see.

 On 10/10/2010 6:51 PM, ransley wrote:

That's right. IR is not in the visible spectrum. I got curious though
and pointed my red laser level at my teeth and saw zilch.

It is possible to see things differently with different light sources.
UV for example causes some things to fluoresce and be seen in the
visible spectrum.

 
revealing

BioStrategist

http://www.facebook.com/vasjpan2

disclaimed.}---

guards]

Bimbos]

That's right, unless something fluoresces under either IR or UV light, it
won't look much different.  We had similar claims made for IR theromometer
being able to detect studs behind walls because the studs transmitted more
heat than the insulation.  Just more internet nonsense.

The only thing a cheap IR thermometer will tell you is when you are
approaching a window or door.  Look at any photograph of a house made with a
thermal imager and you'll see that there's always significant heat leakage
around windows.  As for finding studs, good luck with that. I've been
playing around  my IR thermo since that last post and about the only thing
it's good for is detecting windows and doors - which you don't need a gadget
of any kind to find.  I certainly wouldn't ever use it to try to decide
where a stud inside the house was.  Besides, *inside* the house, where you
are most likely to want to find a stud, the temperature is equalized so no
difference would be seen.

You can look at these images and see what I mean.  Doors and windows stand
out easily in pictures made by expensive thermal imaging cameras.  Not too
many studs are visible, at least from what I can see.

http://www.saniglow.com/images/thermal-resonance.jpg

http://www.creategreenhome.com/images/building_IR_House_thermogram.jpg

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/commercial/2009/11/4/1257350651698/Thermal-image-camera-demo-001.jpg

--
Bobby G.

 On Oct 10, 6:46 pm, vjp2...@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com wrote:

Just in case this isn't a joke, read these three word a few times
until you see what's wrong with them and work from there...

(Hint: the problem is related to why a flashlight with IR LED's would
be useless to most people.)