When you see 'heat rising', what are you actually seeing? - eviltoast

Like the title says: when you see “heat rising” (the wavy/blurry area above a heat source), what are you actually seeing?

Bonus question: How does that cast a shadow? I noticed when I was opening my air fryer, I could see the shadow of the heat rising but, looking at the hot basket itself, couldn’t see it.

    • pdxfed@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      “wavefront of light”, “distorted from planar” 🤯

      You took me straight back to a D- in intro to optics and modern physics where my classmates were trying to solve problems based on concepts, where I was trying to solve the problem of not understanding the concepts.