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[00:00:00.02] (light music) [00:00:05.02] - Hola, my name is Desire Whitmore, [00:00:07.00] and I'm a teacher here in the Teacher Institute. [00:00:09.03] The Exploratorium is a museum [00:00:10.08] filled with hundreds of exhibits that you can use [00:00:13.00] to understand the world around you. [00:00:14.06] One of my favorite exhibits is the giant mirror [00:00:17.00] which you can see behind me. [00:00:18.00] (light music) [00:00:21.01] So I really liked this exhibit because you can see yourself [00:00:24.06] in many different ways. [00:00:26.00] But it's also cool because you can use it [00:00:28.05] to visualize things that we don't normally see [00:00:30.04] with our eyes. [00:00:31.09] You may have recently seen a video [00:00:33.07] demonstrating the effectiveness of different masks [00:00:36.06] at blocking the flow of your breath. [00:00:39.03] We at the Exploratorium [00:00:40.09] have worked with some researchers at Stanford [00:00:43.07] to turn our giant mirror into a way [00:00:47.01] to study this a little bit further. [00:00:49.06] This technique allows us to see temperature differences [00:00:52.06] in moving air. [00:00:54.04] You may have noticed this effect before; [00:00:56.02] either when you're barbecuing [00:00:57.09] and you can see the streaks of hot air [00:00:59.07] coming up above the barbecue, [00:01:01.05] or you may have noticed it as a car ahead of you [00:01:04.09] looks like it's driving over water, [00:01:07.00] like some kind of wavy water, [00:01:08.07] but that water is not actually there. [00:01:10.08] It's really just a reflection from the sky [00:01:13.01] that's being bent upwards by the heat from the pavement [00:01:15.09] up to your eye. [00:01:17.03] Those examples were both of [00:01:19.01] very large temperature differences. [00:01:21.01] So the hot pavement is much hotter than the air above it [00:01:23.07] and the barbecue grill is much hotter than the air above it. [00:01:26.06] But this mirror allows us to see [00:01:28.04] much smaller temperature differences. [00:01:30.05] You can even see the heat coming off of my body and my head, [00:01:34.03] and you can even see my breath. [00:01:37.03] To demonstrate how this works, [00:01:39.03] I want to show you some footage that we took [00:01:42.03] using some hot tea and a cold bowl of ice. [00:01:47.02] As you can see, the air actually travels downward [00:01:51.05] instead of up. [00:01:52.06] This is because the air coming off of the bowl of ice [00:01:55.04] is actually colder than the air around it, [00:01:57.08] so it sinks downward. [00:01:59.08] This is footage from my cup of tea. [00:02:02.04] The steam from my tea is much hotter than the air around it, [00:02:05.06] and so it's rising very quickly. [00:02:07.09] Here's footage of a lighter. [00:02:09.05] First I'll show you what it looks like [00:02:11.07] when I just released some of the gas, the butane gas, [00:02:15.03] out of the lighter. [00:02:16.04] But when I turn the lighter on, [00:02:18.03] you can really see the flame there. [00:02:20.07] And what you're really seeing is the temperature difference [00:02:24.00] between the flame and the air around it. [00:02:27.06] What does this have to do with masks? [00:02:29.05] Well, it turns out that one of the ways [00:02:32.01] that Coronavirus can be transmitted is through your breath. [00:02:35.02] Coronavirus itself is very tiny, [00:02:37.04] but it attaches itself to the droplets of moisture [00:02:40.01] that are in your breath. [00:02:41.03] What masks do is actually disrupt the flow of your breath, [00:02:45.07] so it can stop the Coronavirus [00:02:47.04] from traveling from one place to another. [00:02:50.03] In this footage, [00:02:51.05] there are some things that you might notice. [00:02:53.04] One is that there's actually heat coming off of my body, [00:02:57.02] and it's always there because I'm always emitting heat. [00:03:01.01] I noticed from this footage [00:03:03.03] that even though the breath from my mouth travels very far, [00:03:07.01] so does the breath from my nose. [00:03:09.08] I also noticed that even when I talk, [00:03:12.07] a lot of breath comes out of my nose. [00:03:15.05] So this is a mask that I made at home, [00:03:17.07] and it consists of two layers of cotton [00:03:20.08] with a paper filter in between. [00:03:23.04] Something to notice here [00:03:24.08] is that even though it blocks [00:03:26.07] most of the breath coming out of my mouth, [00:03:29.05] there's still a tiny bit coming out the top of the mask. [00:03:33.07] So this is a surgical mask. [00:03:35.05] And even though it's fitted to my face, [00:03:37.09] you can still see a lot of my breath coming out [00:03:41.00] above the mask. [00:03:42.02] It is still very effective [00:03:43.08] at blocking the forward flow of my breath. [00:03:46.09] So this is a gaiter, and a gaiter might be more comfortable [00:03:51.04] for you to wear. [00:03:52.05] But what you see here [00:03:54.00] is that it is not very effective at all [00:03:57.01] at blocking my breath. [00:03:59.02] And one of the reasons is because the holes in the gaiter [00:04:03.08] are much bigger than the holes in my mask. [00:04:07.08] And you see that it's coming out of both my mouth [00:04:10.08] and my nose and above. [00:04:13.00] So it's actually kind of making everything worse. [00:04:16.05] So this footage is of a face shield, [00:04:19.04] which is one that doctors and nurses wear [00:04:21.03] when they work with patients. [00:04:23.02] And one thing to notice here [00:04:25.03] is that you can clearly see my breath coming down [00:04:29.02] out of the bottom of the shield. [00:04:31.09] This next footage shows when I'm wearing a mask [00:04:35.04] and a shield, [00:04:36.07] and you can see that it's actually very effective [00:04:39.00] at blocking my breath from getting to other people. [00:04:42.03] I've also seen a lot of people out in public [00:04:45.00] wearing their mask with their nose hanging out of it. [00:04:47.08] You can see here in this footage [00:04:50.00] that that does absolutely nothing [00:04:52.01] to block my breath from traveling. [00:04:54.04] So the proper way to wear your mask [00:04:56.05] is to actually fit it over your nose. [00:05:00.00] So what did we learn? [00:05:01.05] We learned that the Coronavirus [00:05:03.06] can travel through your breath, [00:05:05.04] and that's one of the main ways that it can be transmitted. [00:05:08.05] We learned that we can image our breath [00:05:11.03] using this really cool technique [00:05:12.09] because our breath is hotter than the air around us. [00:05:16.00] We also learned that different types of masks [00:05:18.03] can be more effective or less effective than others [00:05:21.04] at how far they can stop your breath from traveling. [00:05:24.04] But each and every one of these masks [00:05:26.02] did allow some of our breath to escape. [00:05:29.00] This is why it's important to not only wear a mask, [00:05:31.08] but to also socially distance from others. [00:05:34.01] So let's continue to use science [00:05:35.07] to help us understand the world around us [00:05:37.05] so that we can all stay safe and well. [00:05:40.02] (light music) [00:05:42.07]

Education Programs

Seeing Your Breath: Using Science to Choose the Proper Mask

Published:   November 10, 2020
Total Running Time:   00:05:42

Working with Stanford scientists, we at the Exploratorium modified our Giant Mirror exhibit to allow us to observe small changes in the temperature of moving air. In this video, we use Giant Mirror to collect evidence about which face coverings work best to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. This information can help us make informed decisions about which masks to wear to keep each other safe during this pandemic. 

This video was made in collaboration with Jacob Hines and Evan Wang of Stanford University. Jacob is a PhD candidate in applied physics, where he works on quantum engineering with cold atoms. He is also a former president of the Stanford Optical Society, a student organization that connects researchers in fields related to optics. Evan is a PhD candidate in electrical engineering. He is studying the design and application of nanophotonic metasurfaces and is a co-president of the Stanford Optical Society student organization.

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  • High-speed breathing visualization from NIST

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