ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Laser Direct Infrared (LDIR) Imaging

Okay, so imagine you have a special flashlight that can shine a beam of light that you can't see with your eyes. This special light is called infrared light. When you shine this light on things, it can bounce back and give you a picture of what's happening.

Now, imagine that instead of just one flashlight, you have a whole bunch of them, all lined up in a row. And instead of shining them all at once, you shine them one at a time really quickly, almost like you're taking a bunch of pictures really fast. When you do this, you can get a really detailed picture of what's happening.

That's kind of what laser direct infrared (ldir) imaging is. Instead of flashlights, they use lasers to shine infrared light on things. And instead of just taking one picture, they take a lot of them really quickly to get a detailed image.

This can be really helpful in lots of different ways, like checking for leaks in pipes or finding out if a building is losing heat. Scientists also use it to study things like plants, where they can see how much sunlight the leaves are absorbing.

So, ldir imaging is like a really fancy camera that uses lasers and special light to take really cool pictures that can help us learn more about the world around us.