How the heck does a laser/infrared thermometer actually work? | AskScience Blog

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Wednesday, December 2, 2020

How the heck does a laser/infrared thermometer actually work?

How the heck does a laser/infrared thermometer actually work?


How the heck does a laser/infrared thermometer actually work?

Posted: 02 Dec 2020 04:57 AM PST

The way a low-tech contact thermometer works is pretty intuitive, but how can some type of light output detect surface temperature and feed it back to the source in a laser/infrared thermometer?

Edit: 🤯 thanks to everyone for the informative comments and helping to demystify this concept!

submitted by /u/Smarticus-
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How did scientists during the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic know what a virus was?

Posted: 02 Dec 2020 07:35 AM PST

Medical science had come a long way throughout the latter half of the 19th century, let alone up to WWI. The germ theory was generally accepted, and scientists were mostly on the same page about how disease outbreaks started with microorganisms. They could even observe and describe the shape of certain bacteria with microscopes. But how did they know what viruses were? They're too small to physically observe with early 20th century technology, and you can't culture them in the same manner as bacteria. A lot of work was done during the Influenza Pandemic around finding the causative agent. However, much of this work mistakenly focused on bacteria that colonize the lungs as a consequence of the initial influenza infection. They clearly knew that viruses existed (IIRC scientists had attributed polio to a viral, rather than bacteria, infection at that point) but how did they know this given the limits of scientific methods at the time?

submitted by /u/TheBigApple11
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When projecting data into a subspace, is there a metric which is always minimized? For example, projecting high dimensional data onto the first 2 components of an LDA, what's special about the point that it is projected onto?

Posted: 02 Dec 2020 07:52 AM PST

Is fluorine ion stable?

Posted: 02 Dec 2020 07:41 AM PST

Hello, my question is, That a fluorine ion has a net charge of -1 but its valence shell is filled. Is the Ion stable? because its shell is full but the net charge is not zero.

submitted by /u/sound_of_da_police1
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How does acid damage the skin?

Posted: 02 Dec 2020 04:05 AM PST

From what I learned in chemistry, according to the Brønsted-Lowry theory of acids and bases, acids are proton donors.

To me it's baffling that contact with such a substance would cause such chemical burns and damage as it does. Let's say hydrochloric acid, HCl is the example -- I'm assuming it binds with molecules present on the skin and body, however which molecules? And they are just being donated a proton to and it causes burns? Is it possible to write a classical chemical equation for this reaction? What actually happens and why?

submitted by /u/mrFabz
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Why were COVID vaccine trial participants only tested if they showed symptoms?

Posted: 02 Dec 2020 05:47 AM PST

My understanding is that for the currently leading vaccines' trials (Moderna/Pfizer), participants were only tested for covid if they showed symptoms, and therefore we don't know if the vaccines prevent non-symptomatic infections. This info seems crucial to me because if they don't protect against this type of infection and people who get vaccinated start acting like they are totally protected, they might spread the disease at much higher rates. Why not just test all participants periodically during the trials?

submitted by /u/falafelsaur
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How does donating a kidney actually work without harming the donor?

Posted: 02 Dec 2020 07:11 AM PST

In my mind, if someone is in need of a kidney, doesn't the person who is donating the kidney put themselves equally at risk of health complications because they are giving up a vital health organ?

submitted by /u/ecanem63
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Ask Anything Wednesday - Economics, Political Science, Linguistics, Anthropology

Posted: 02 Dec 2020 07:00 AM PST

Welcome to our weekly feature, Ask Anything Wednesday - this week we are focusing on Economics, Political Science, Linguistics, Anthropology

Do you have a question within these topics you weren't sure was worth submitting? Is something a bit too speculative for a typical /r/AskScience post? No question is too big or small for AAW. In this thread you can ask any science-related question! Things like: "What would happen if...", "How will the future...", "If all the rules for 'X' were different...", "Why does my...".

Asking Questions:

Please post your question as a top-level response to this, and our team of panellists will be here to answer and discuss your questions. The other topic areas will appear in future Ask Anything Wednesdays, so if you have other questions not covered by this weeks theme please either hold on to it until those topics come around, or go and post over in our sister subreddit /r/AskScienceDiscussion , where every day is Ask Anything Wednesday! Off-theme questions in this post will be removed to try and keep the thread a manageable size for both our readers and panellists.

Answering Questions:

Please only answer a posted question if you are an expert in the field. The full guidelines for posting responses in AskScience can be found here. In short, this is a moderated subreddit, and responses which do not meet our quality guidelines will be removed. Remember, peer reviewed sources are always appreciated, and anecdotes are absolutely not appropriate. In general if your answer begins with 'I think', or 'I've heard', then it's not suitable for /r/AskScience.

If you would like to become a member of the AskScience panel, please refer to the information provided here.

Past AskAnythingWednesday posts can be found here. Ask away!

submitted by /u/AutoModerator
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How do smart watches monitor heart rate, and are they accurate?

Posted: 02 Dec 2020 06:57 AM PST

Why exactly is it too late to get the rabies vaccine once you get symptoms?

Posted: 01 Dec 2020 09:06 PM PST

Does grouping your numbers in Keno increase your series average winnings due to Poisson clumping?

Posted: 02 Dec 2020 06:13 AM PST

Hi,

I was recently told that a scientifically supported strategy in Keno is to 'group' your numbers as this will increase your average winnings over the series due to Poisson clumping.

An example scenario was given that if you equally distributed all 20 of your numbers on the board that you are less likely to win due to the mathematical improbability of no clumping occurring per the Poisson distribution. Meanwhile if you grouped all your guesses in the top left quadrant (for example) it would have a higher chance of coming into actuality over the series of games.

But if every number drawn is random then wouldn't it mean that every combination of numbers is necessarily just as probable? And if this is true for an individual game then it logically follows that the amount of games played is a non-factor? Additionally, isn't the main reason these observed groupings can exist just a result of the visual representation of the game as a board with two axis? If you instead rendered the Keno numbers 1-80 as a single row you would lose the groupings anyway.

Am I correct that there is mathematically no possible way for your choice of numbers to influence your average chance of winning at Keno (either in a single game or a series of games)? That Poisson clumping is relevant only as an observation of the resulting perceived clumping but not to game theory? If not, why?

Thanks!

Here is a snippet with some of the sources provided to me by the person who told me about this:

https://towardsdatascience.com/the-poisson-distribution-and-poisson-process-explained-4e2cb17d459

https://stattrek.com/probability-distributions/poisson.aspx#:~:text=The%20probability%20distribution%20of%20a,Poisson%20Formula.&text=P(x%3B%20%CE%BC)%20%3D,(%CE%BCx)%20%2F%20x

https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~aldous/Book2/book.pdf

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=WDj1DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA46&lpg=PA46&dq=poisson+clumping+and+gambling&source=bl&ots=WuyIZNoYae&sig=ACfU3U0g32TwDLmXIVCHlecSd3PUp45LmQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjSqI-J4q3tAhUKwjgGHWztD_MQ6AEwGnoECAgQAg#v=onepage&q=poisson%20clumping%20and%20gambling&f=false

submitted by /u/govjmal
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What effect does “warming up” a car actually have in the cold/snow?

Posted: 02 Dec 2020 05:31 AM PST

I understand that there is some benefit to giving cars a bit to start to cycle fluids around, but is there really validation for people who run their cars for 10-20 minutes before driving in the winter when it comes to the performance/durability of the car? It makes sense that you would want to start to melt snow or ice off, but is there any meaningful difference in mechanical performance?

submitted by /u/Njcleri
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What is the inside of marsipual bags made of?

Posted: 02 Dec 2020 05:30 AM PST

Is ist bare skin like the belly of a corgi? Or more something like short haired fur?

submitted by /u/MTtheDestroyer
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What mechanism allows the newly created mRNA vaccines to enter the cell but not the nucleus of a cell?

Posted: 01 Dec 2020 07:03 PM PST

How is the mRNA crossing the cell membrane? Is it enclosed in a lipid bilayer? What prevents it from entering the nucleus once it's inside of a cell? Thanks.

submitted by /u/Pavement_ist_rad
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What happens during Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness? Are new cells growing?

Posted: 02 Dec 2020 03:39 AM PST

How is a virus captured in the wild (and copied?) and sent to different labs to research vaccines?

Posted: 01 Dec 2020 08:50 AM PST

What is luciferase? How does it appear in general life, and is it connected to anything in the medical realm?

Posted: 01 Dec 2020 06:14 PM PST

Context: someone mentioned Luciferase is in vaccines as tracking agents, and while I don't believe that, I want to know what it actually does both connected to humans. I did some quick google searches and know it's connected to lighting/fireflies, but that's the base of what I know. Disclaimer, I'm not a scientist. I wish to educate myself for my own sake.

Also, if flair is improper, please tell me.

submitted by /u/throwawaybcofc23843
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Can reindeer breed with whitetail deer?

Posted: 01 Dec 2020 07:11 PM PST

I was asking since I've seen images of elk/caribou (reindeer) hybrids online and I want to know if that would be possible with a whitetail deer and a reindeer since they're both part of the deer family. Please tell me.

submitted by /u/Sayakachan99
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How does the natural immune response differ from being vaccinated against corona?

Posted: 01 Dec 2020 03:10 PM PST

So most vaccines as far as I understand work by triggering an immune response without triggering the symptoms or at least triggering only lesser symptoms.

When talking about the already existing natural immunity of people who had corona it is quite thoroughly mentioned, that their immunity is not reliable, since there can still be another infection.

But the same goes for vaccines apparently given the 90 -95% rating that's mentioned so often.

So how would getting vaccinated differ from already having had corona, especially when symptomatic. Would people who already had corona still have to be vaccinated?

Where I live, being back from corona does not matter at all, while as far as I understand even if there is no 100 % immunity, the likelihood of reinfection should still be way lower for these people.

submitted by /u/Dreilala
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Are there specific parts of the brain responsible for abstract processes like 'creativity' as there are with things like language centres?

Posted: 01 Dec 2020 05:46 PM PST

Or if creativity is more a property of consciousness, do split brain patients show decreased creativity or problem solving ability due to their brains not being able to work in tandem? Or just changed creativity?

submitted by /u/TheSpaghettiEmperor
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