The Spectroscope

Dear Reader,

I was recently at Nuclear Chemistry when Anders brought a collection of scientific toys along, Anders operates a on line store which sells a range of different things. All of his toys are things which have a strong science theme in them.

When I got home, my wife (Paula) looked at what I had and she was of the view that I looked happy with the range of things which I had brought home.

One of the items I had got was a visible spectrometer which contains a grating, a slit and a lens. After an hour or so of folding and gluing with UHU solvent glue I was ready to go with my spectrometer.

Anders had suggested that I should point the thing at an energy saving compact fluorescent light bulb. When I did so I was rewarded with a lovely spectrum with a series of lines.

I took the photograph using a mobile phone camera, my normal camera was unsuitable as the lens of my camera is far wider than the eyepiece of the spectrometer. All this for less than 100 SEK !

I also got some photochromic beads, and some mechanical toys.