Infrared!

Over the weekend we turned on the stove in the family room. After watching an episode or two Breaking Bad Ennie noticed the the speaker that's adjacent to the stove and the TV stand were getting a bit toasty.Quickly we turned it off... but it was sad that we couldn't use the stove until we get the TV mounted to the wall.Then I looked at the configuration. The only bits that were getting hot were parts that are in direct view of the fire. Next to the stove, even though it's blazing hot, wasn't hot at all. Based on this I was thought that this wasn't radiative heating and certainly not convective (since it's next to, not above), which only leaves infrared heating.Infrared is light.Both the speaker and stand were black. (Presumably even in IR) This of course means that all the IR that's coming from the stove was going to heat the speaker and the stand.So... what can you do if you don't want light to hit something? A mirror!Ok, so it's not a mirror... but it is reflective.Aluminum foil serves a second purpose too: since there's a bit of an air gap between it and the substrate even if there is radiative heating of the aluminum there's an insulating layer of air to keep things cool.As it turns out, yes, science works. Everything is cool now! :-D