Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi, I have a question: I'm curious about thermal vision, and my question is this...

If two guys are in a dark room and one of the guys has thermal vision googles and directs them to a mirror in a fashion that he would be able to see the other guy's reflection under normal conditions, what would he see?

a) Would he see the shape of the guy in reds and oranges and yellows reflected in the mirror, or
b) Would he see a flat blue surface (cold) that the mirror would normally be?

Hi billyrotomu92,

This is an interesting question. I don't know the answer off the top of my head, but I think I can point you in the right direction to figure it out. Visible light, what we see with our human eyes, is just a narrow part of the electromagnetic spectrum:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... s_edit.svg

Mirrors reflect visible light quite well, which is why you can see regular reflections in a mirror. "Thermal vision" detects infrared light, which is given off by hot objects, and is just outside the range of visible light that we can see. So, whether or not you can see thermal reflections in a mirror depends on whether they reflect infrared light well. I bet you can figure this out with a google search for "Do mirrors reflect infrared light". Of course, if you can get your hands on a pair of infrared goggles, you could do an experiment to find out!

I have read that something like this is very good.