Painted-on salt provides glowing thermometer for tiny things

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Temperature is notoriously difficult to measure, mostly because it's an average quantity. The temperature of a room is often recorded at a single point, when it's meant to be a measure of the average energy of the air in the room-a room that will have spatial and temporal fluctuations around that average.

As anyone who has argued over the thermostat will know, measuring the average is difficult enough. But what if I want to measure the actual fluctuations and temperature differences in the room? Then I need a thermometer that provides a temperature image.

You might be thinking "get an IR camera, dummy." But there is a much cooler option than an infrared camera. It's a (nearly) normal camera coupled with a laser that measures temperature from the emission of visible light.

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