Build A Spectrometer

Build your own visible absorption spectrophotometer

This project will require you to design and build a functioning visible spectrophotometer. Designing and building an instrument is a great way to eliminate the “black box” view of instrumentation. The more you understand how an instrument is put together and how it functions, the better you will understand its capabilities and limitations. There are many designs available online and in the literature that you should use to guide your endeavor. The general requirements for your visible absorbance spectrophotometer are shown in the figure below.

spectrophotometer.png

You must provide a full procedure that describes all the materials required to build your spectrophotometer and fully details how to assemble it. Once assembled, you must demonstrate the capabilities of your spectrophotometer for your lab instructor. The quality of your instrument will be evaluated by acquiring absorbance measurements from Red-40 solutions of known concentrations. The absorbance data will be plotted versus Red-40 concentration to generate a Beer’s Law plot. You will be asked to determine the concentration of Red-40 in an unknown during the presentation. To help get you started, two research papers documenting the design of simple spectrophotometers are posted on the course website. The references for each of these papers are also listed below.

Submit summaries to:
Turnitin.com

References:

1. Lema, M. A.; Aljinovic, E. M.; Lozano, M. E. Using a Homemade Spectrophotometer in Teaching Biosciences. Biochem. Mol. Biol. Edu. 2002, 30, 106-110.

2. Albert, D. R.; Todt, M. A.; Davis, F. D. A Low-Cost Quantitative Absorption Spectrophotometer J. Chem. Educ. 2012, 89, 1432-1435.

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