What is infrared?

Infrared is like the warm feeling you get when you sit by a fire on a cold day, but it's invisible.

Imagine your favorite blanket on a chilly evening. It feels cozy because it’s trapping heat, right? Now think about how that same heat travels from the fire to your body. That's infrared, it's like heat waves that you can’t see, but you can feel them warming your skin.

When something is hot, like a lamp or the sun, it sends out invisible heat rays. These are called infrared because they're just beyond what we can normally see, kind of like how radio waves are just beyond what we hear.

You’ve probably felt infrared before! When you stand close to a toaster, you feel warm even before it’s fully heated up. That’s the infrared from the toaster reaching your skin, giving you that cozy, toasty feeling.

In short, infrared is like invisible heat waves that come from hot things, and they're all around us, warming our bodies every day.