The grand illusion that was shown on last Saturday’s episode of the BBC Show The Magicians hosted by Lenny Henry was a great illustration of how Thermal Imaging can be used to illustrate many things – not just heat loss. In the show, the Magicians Barry & Stuart demonstrated how an illusion was created, by showing the illusion to the audience, and also showing a Thermal Image of the illusion on a screen using a Thermal Imaging camera just like the FLIR P660. In the illusion an empty frame is built up into a box using pre-prepared panels, the front of the box is then revealed and is “magically” found to contain a person. In this instant they used a thin plastic sheet material similar to that used in a bin bag – this is opaque in the visible spectrum (0.7 – 1.0?m), but transparent in the Long Wave IR (7.0 – 14.0?m) – as a result you can see the 3rd Person crawl behind the sheets as they are dragged into place, and then step into the box, hidden behind the last sheet, and then “magically” pop out when the box was opened.
What they didn’t show was how they managed to swap Angela Griffin for a bloke in a Saturday Night Fever one piece suit, complete with 1970’s chest hair! But the observant among you will have noticed that after Angela has crawled across the stage to the second panel, she needs to turn around, and this is not visible to the Thermal Camera – and is the opportunity to switch people QED!
