National Chemistry Week 2024

Picture Perfect Chemistry

We celebrate National Chemistry Week with the theme ‘Picture Perfect Chemistry’. Chemistry plays a crucial role in how photographs and images are created. How does Shepherd Color use this chemistry with pigments? Glad you asked!

The Shepherd Color Company’s Arctic® infrared (IR) reflective pigments have been used for decades in cool roofing applications. These pigments excel in selectively absorbing visible wavelengths for color, while reflecting and rejecting the invisible IR wavelengths. This helps keep the surface cooler as well as reducing the energy to cool the inside of the building itself.

To visualize the temperature on surfaces using our Arctic pigment, we use an FLIR camera. This thermal camera is a non-contact device that detects infrared energy (heat) and converts it into a visual image. A thermal camera is made up of a lens, a thermal sensor, processing electronics, and a mechanical housing. A FLIR thermal camera can detect tiny differences in heat—as small as 0.01°C—and display them as shades of grey or with different color palettes (1).

Beyond capturing the temperature of Arctic pigment coated surfaces, thermal cameras can be used for a number of things including: surveillance, military operations, building inspections, firefighting, skin temperature screening (remember COVID?), just to name a few.

Learn more at https://www.acs.org/education/national-chemistry-week.html.

(1) Source: www.flir.com

Learn more about our Arctic pavement experiment here!
Find your color!