Engineering

Miniature spectrometer for the smartphone

Recognizing fake drugs? Testing water samples ourselves? Checking the quality of air? In the future, it could be possible to do all this using a smartphone in a quick, cost-effective and straightforward way. The process is ...

Telecom

Laser communications: Empowering more data than ever before

Launching this summer, NASA's Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) will showcase the dynamic powers of laser communications technologies. With NASA's ever-increasing human and robotic presence in space, missions ...

Energy & Green Tech

Invention lets rotting veggies make a greener world

For generations, kids have been coaxed into finishing their vegetables after their parents sternly advised them that it is not nice to waste food when people are starving elsewhere in the world. But someday soon, kids may ...

Energy & Green Tech

Oxygen breathes new life into solar cell research

Scientists in Australia and the United States have been able to 'upconvert' low energy light into high energy light, which can be captured by solar cells, in a new way, with oxygen the surprise secret ingredient. The results ...

Robotics

Transparent, reflective objects now within grasp of robots

Kitchen robots are a popular vision of the future, but if a robot of today tries to grasp a kitchen staple such as a clear measuring cup or a shiny knife, it likely won't be able to. Transparent and reflective objects are ...

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Infrared

Infrared (IR) radiation is electromagnetic radiation whose wavelength is longer than that of visible light (400-700 nm), but shorter than that of terahertz radiation (100 µm - 1 mm) and microwaves (~30,000 µm). Infrared radiation spans roughly three orders of magnitude (750 nm and 100 µm).

Direct sunlight has a luminous efficacy of about 93 lumens per watt of radiant flux, which includes infrared (47% share of the spectrum), visible (46%), and ultra-violet (only 6%) light. Bright sunlight provides luminance of approximately 100,000 candela per square meter at the Earth's surface.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA