Infrared: Looking at More Garbage Bags and Glass

Seeing Through a "Wall" with an Infrared Cam
There's a catch to that.

Anyway, finally did it. Someone finally bothered to grab a black garbage bag and just stick it in front of a camera with another camera in front of it. It's a simple household, not contractor-grade or extra thick, black garbage bag hung up between two curtains. Those are the same curtains used to film this attempt at seeing through another "wall". It didn't work out all that well.

A label wasn't found on either the bag or the box saying what type of plastic the garbage bag was -- could have been there, didn't see it. Wikipedia and quick Googling suggested what the more common ones were made of, but I won't spoil it for you.

The story behind this is that some TV and movies told me, once upon a time, that infrared cameras could see through walls. Well, I did some research and found the truth of the matter. At the same time, I found out what long-wave infrared cameras could potentially see through. The video is of an arm stuck behind a black garbage bag. I think those are slightly transparent because I recall being able to make something out if I put it up to some light.

Have to try this with many layers of bags in at some point...

Random IR Image

Looking at Glass with an Infrared Camera
This has sort of been done before except with a proper mirror. The difference is that one expects a mirror to reflect things. With glass, one expects to see through things. How does it work out with a long-wave infrared camera?

That is a camera looking at a hand behind a layer of glass in the video -- it was attached to an Ikea cabinet, and I think the glass was only a single layer thick. Hand is a regular-ish human hand on a relatively cool autumn night. More specifically, it was 1:00 am in the morning. That's important because if it was a bone cold winter, some fingers probably would have been frozen and this video would have turned out slightly differently.

One thing that wasn't planned was to see the temperature increase on the glass and the object on the other side causing it. There are more than a few body heat related videos on the InvertedKB channel but most of them are infrared only. Visible light helps to tell what's going on.

Reminder: Temperatures are not accurate.