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Infrared Radiation

Infrared radiation is heat energy that travels as invisible light, like the warmth you feel from sunlight on your skin.

Think of it this way

Open an oven door, and heat warms your face before you touch a thing. That warmth travels as invisible rays from the hot walls to your skin. Infrared radiation is this invisible heat energy. It moves through air in straight lines from warm objects to cooler ones.

Explaining infrared radiation by grade level

Hold your hand near a sunny window. You feel warm, but you do not see the heat. That warmth comes from a kind of light your eyes cannot see. A thermometer placed in that invisible light would show a higher temperature than one in the shade.

Projects that explore infrared radiation

Herschel's Infrared Light Experiment

Heat energy travels as invisible light beyond the red end of the visible spectrum. When you split sunlight with a prism and place blackened alcohol thermometers in each color band, the temperature rises steadily from blue to red. The thermometer set just past the red — where no color is visible at all — reads even higher than any visible color. That invisible region, which William Herschel identified in 1800, carries more heat than visible light does.

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