Dental Blue vs. UV [Spectrum]

A picture is worth a thousand words.

cool, that thing uses a prism I take it...

wow, nice picture!
how do you do this?
well, sure, prism or some refraction mirror, and i even saw a cd working.. but this just looks great, and how did you calibrate it? not many lightsources out there, i actually just know the 632,8 of a HENE where one can be sure about the wavelength..

manuel

You can also get 543.5nm from a green HeNe laser, and 488.0nm from the most common argon ion laser line available.
But the 632.8nm orangish red HeNe laser is by far the easiest, least expensive, and most available plasma laser you can get for calibration or any other purpose.

Diffraction grating. See the little tick at 546nm? With the standard overhead fluorscent tubes, you adjust that tick to the highly dominant green band (546.074nm) that is produced by the Mercury in those lights. Or use the mercury vapor streetlights.

oh, way easier than i thought!
any more nice wavelength flying around here at home?
i guess the sodium line on other streetlamps would be an example.
well, the only left question would be, how would i arrange the "scale"? i guess i need two fixpoints/wavelength to arrange it?
hmm, no, i dont think this is understandable..
okay. when i throw light through a prism or on that grating, the light is reflected/passes in different angle depending on the wavelength. so is it possible to calculate the angle and with that the distance of the target with the measurement?
oh, and another question.. wouldnt you get different readings depending on the angle you shine on the prism/grating? or perhaps even depending on the angle the light shines out of the source?

You need a narrow slit to shine light through, two slits separated by a distance will create narrow acceptance angle, plus more defined spectra lines.

Okay, whipped these together tonight in a hurry, sorry about the blur.

i really like the pics, thanks!
i´m currently playing around, just have cd´s here unfortunaly. i´m sure you have several reflections (1st, 2nd order etc) with regular gratings as well? except that the cd is like a circular grating, it shouldnt make such a big difference then? or is a grating worth the trouble finding it?

now that i play around with it, i´m even more amazed about the intensity and look of your pics
(okay, i just kinda answered my question.. no gratings on ebay, werent there dozens some time ago? damn!)

again, thank you very much for your effort, i really appreciate it!
(not sure if i should really ask for a pic of your whole setup?)

Manuel/krutzbeuazen

okay, there are huge differences in cd´s, cd-r, the foil itself, or just the disk without foil. so i guess a real grating would be worth it.

found a site where you can get a kit to build a spectrometer, germany/german unfortunaly. cheap, and looks quite nice.. and "contact us for international shipping" as well. nice pictures there too.
pics&buy
more pics
i´ll get me a bunch, keep one, and play with the gratings of the others.. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

edit: 1st link was broken

Okay, added two more light sources:

I found a DIFFRACTION GRATING SPECTROMETER SPECTROSCOPE on e-bay for like $12.50
item#3178761639
have a look.
Yaesumofo

Nice pictures. Unfortunately I'm not sure how to interpret them. I've always wondered what colors were produced by the Nichia. The picture seems to tell me it covers the entire visible spectrum. Can this be? Is this the standard Nichia with a yellow phosphor?

The yellow YAG phosphor is a very broadband emitter, here, take a look:



The huge peak at 470nm is due to the blue die in the LED.

Thanks, now I know what I've been looking at for years with my LED flashlights. I had assumed a phosphor would be narrow band. Now someone needs to invent a wideband blue LED.

I assume the Luxeon is similar.

Here ya go Eluminator, the Luxeon White: