Hexavalent
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$5 Spectrophotometer
Incredibly, people at the University of Illinois have come up with this; a working spectrophotometer that uses a mobile phone camera and a few
pounds/dollars worth of easily-obtained equipment.
www.asdlib.org/onlineArticles/elabware/Scheeline_Kelly_Spect...
"Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." Winston Churchill
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SM2
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That's so awesome. Wonder if it does infrared, near IR."
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watson.fawkes
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A couple of quotations from the summary PDF should give some idea of
the scope here: | Quote: | Sometime during 2008, it occurred to the corresponding author that cell phone cameras had
become common among students. "They're only 8 bit CMOS chips," was the initial thought. "The
signal‐to‐noise ratio will be terrible. Dark current is likely to be a problem. No one in their right
mind would use such a poor detector for doing quality spectrophotometry." In November, 2008,
the author had a double‐take. If all these measurement problems were so blatant, wouldn't that
make the concepts behind the problems easier to sense and learn than if one used a high quality
detector and system? |
| Quote: | To date, no student has reported an
accurate, quantitative measurement. Yet, in discussion, it appears that they understand gratings,
stray light, and dispersion more clearly than do students who have only heard of or seen pictures of
the instrument components. |
This is an educational tool. If you want to build your own spectroscope, learn
the basics with this project. Then build a real one.
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Hexavalent
International Hazard
Posts: 1564
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Location: Wales, UK
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I am aware that it is never going to be perfect, but for this cost who can complain? It will, yes, be of great educational benefit yet I'm sure that,
if built and used well, it could be a useful tool at times, even if just for preliminary analysis.
"Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." Winston Churchill
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