ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Acoustic camera

An acoustic camera is like a special tool that can help us see sounds in a picture. You know how we use our eyes to see things around us? Well, our ears can hear sounds around us too, like birds chirping or people talking. But sometimes, we might want to see where exactly the sounds are coming from or how loud they are in different parts of a room, just like how we use a flashlight or a ruler to measure things.

That's where the acoustic camera comes in! It's a device that has a lot of tiny microphones set up in a specific pattern. When we turn on the acoustic camera, it picks up all the sounds around it and then uses all the tiny microphones to figure out where each sound is coming from. It then puts all this information together to create a picture that shows us where the sounds are coming from in the room, kind of like a map.

This picture is really helpful because it helps scientists and engineers understand how sound moves and changes in different environments. For example, if they want to build a concert hall, they might use an acoustic camera to see where the best place to put the speakers would be so that everyone in the audience can hear the music clearly. Or if they are building a car, they might use an acoustic camera to see where the sounds from the engine are coming from so that it doesn't get too loud for the people inside.

So, in a nutshell, an acoustic camera helps us see and understand sounds in a way that our ears alone can't do.