This article presents an investigation on inelastic translation-vibration/rotation (T-V/R) energy exchange processes between hot atoms and CO2 molecules in order to introduce a new technique-infrared diode laser probing which can be used to study molecular kinetic processes including phoiodissociations, collisions and chemical reactions.This technique provides about 10,000 fold improvement in resolution over the previous technique (infrared fluorescence) used in kinetic studies. In addition, it has about a factor of 10 improvement in speed and senMfcivity over the fluoresoenoe method. It provides an almoet unambiguotis probe for a given molecule, or a specific Btate of a molecule in the presence of many other molecules or molecules distributed in hardreds of different quantum statee.