---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Adam Hadhazy" <adamhadh
...@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 27, 2012 3:48 PM
Subject: DIY spectrometer follow-up
To: "Jeffrey Warren" <j
...@publiclaboratory.org>
Cc: <JBeilin
...@hearst.com>
Hi Jeff,
Hope you've had a good week! I've been working on the PopMech article about
DIY Spectrometry and I wanted to link you up with the magazine's art
department, who will likely be contacting you. (I've cc'd Jerry from
PopMech on here who will pass your info on to them.)
For the article, we thought it would be cool to briefly describe the 5 or
so household examples of DIY spectrometry using the Public Lab spectrometer
and Spectral Workbench software, *and* to provide a small image of what the
associated spectra looks like. I had planned on generating some of the
spectra myself, but I'm having trouble with my spectrometer getting
anywhere near as clean a spectrum as you and other Public Lab users –
sorry! The five examples we are going with right now are listed below.
Could I ask you the two favors of 1) forwarding us a few nice big jpeg or
png files of certain spectra glimpsed in videos on Public Lab? And 2) could
you record spectra for some light examples and the Sun, as described with
the examples below? There already are examples on Public Lab for the
laundry detergent and the modified aquarium LED lamp, and I have supplied
those links.
*
*
*Laundry Detergent*
Image already available on the Public Lab site:
http://spectralworkbench.org/system/photos/219/large/type%20to%20labe...
*
*
*Aquarium Lighting*
Image: http://spectralworkbench.org/spectra/show/151
*
*
*Lights*
A fluorescent lamp for calibration with the distinctive spectral lines,
e.g. the mercury line at 546 nanometers, would be great. There are some
examples of this I believe on Public Lab. We'd also like a high-pressure
sodium lamp street light example, which apparently has a distinctive bright
yellow line at 589 nanometers, as shown in this link:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~zhuxj/astro/html/spectrometer.html Other
easy-to-obtain light examples with interesting spectral features would work
too, if the sodium lamps aren't handy.
*
*
*The Sun*
Again, the cs.cmu.edu link above provides nice examples of what sunlight
spectra look like when sampled at different times of the day. Could you
please do a Sun shot for us?
*Olive oil*
You have the video online of your olive oil tests – could you hook us up
with a big image of one of those sample spectra? Here's the link to the
olive oil page:
http://publiclaboratory.org/notes/warren/7-2-2012/matching-olive-oil-...
OK, hope this makes sense. Basically we just want to have a spectra image
for each example. I'm out of town next week so could you please wrangle the
lamp and Sun spectra, plus the olive oil spectra pics, before 8/6 or so?
Thank you very much for your help with this, Jeff!
Cheers,
Adam
443-994-0506
