ASTRO LAB 2:  LIGHT, SPECTRA, AND COLOR
Aug 23, 2010
Goals: To gain a deeper understanding of the kinds of spectra and the light sources that produce them

Advance reading:  		1) Astrophysics Lab Guide
				2) Freedman and Kaufmann 5(6)
				3) Walker 28(1, 2, 6)

equipment list									

all sections:		Project Star Spectroscope				

section 1:		frosted incandescent light bulb  &  dimmer switch,			448 on cart	
 butane lighter, computer screen					or any room w/shades

section 2:		4 gas discharge tubes (labeled A, B, C, and D)  			457
&  power supplies;                                                                    (far N end of hall)
			Giancoli (a Physics text we used before Walker) text 
and/or wall chart of spectra that is hanging by my office.
			
section 4:		overhead projector along with a diffraction grating 		442/436/439  or any 
and slit; measuring tapes						room w/white screen
										& preferably w/shades

section 3:		overhead projector along with a diffraction grating 		442/436/439 or any 
and slit; colored liquids; red and cyan filters;			room w/white screen
solar spectrum chart						& preferably w/shades

section 5:		a light source that you can bring to the Physics hall		on my computer

The Project Star Spectrometer has a holographic diffraction grating mounted in a plastic circular sandwich at one end; this is the end that you will look through.  The circular disk can be rotated until you get a nice spectrum which lies between the two sets of numerical markings that you see when you look through the grating; the bottom numbers represent the wavelength of light in nanometers (nm); the top numbers represent the energy of the light in electron volts (ev).   The spectrometers are quite fragile; please treat them with care.

At the opposite end of the spectrometer is the all-important slit, which you can see by looking down the rectangular hole on the right side.  You can also see the slit by looking through the front of the spectrometer toward the extreme right corner.  Try this, because I want you to notice if there is also another tiny unintended slit even to the right of that; the manufacturers did not do a great job in guarding against stray light entry... you may need to place your finger over this unintended light entry if you are looking at a faint source.  Because the slit is where the light enters, you always want to point the slit directly at the light source.  On the top face of the spectrometer is a list of lines of various elements that you might see in the course of this lab.  This list may help you identify the composition of a particular light source.

Your grade for this lab will be determined not only by your work and your written answers but also by your partners’ answers.  For example, if you are in a group of 3, 1/3 of each of the three partners’ answers will be graded, and the individual grades summed will apply to the whole group.  In other words, 2/3 of your grade will be determined by your partners’ answers.

Based on my past experience with this lab, I strongly believe you will do better if you READ THE QUESTIONS at the end of the lab BEFORE you actually start doing the lab!

SECTION 1 (20 minutes)

A)  Active range of color vision 

Determine the range of YOUR color vision (in nm) with the spectrometer. Look at the frosted (or straight filament; I don't know which is better) incandescent bulb or sunlight reflected from the sky or clouds that is described in the next part.  Don’t agonize over this measurement; within 10 or 20 nm is good enough.  Record the minimum and maximum wavelength visible.

Did everyone in your group have the some active range of color vision, to within experimental uncertainty?

B)  Changes in color and spectrum by a light source of variable temperature.

Attach a dimmer switch to a frosted incandescent light bulb in order to vary the temperature and brightness of the bulb.  Start with the bulb at its brightest and gradually decrease the intensity.  How does the color of the filament change (without using the spectrometer)?  (With the spectrometer) how do the colors/spectrum change?  Which colors disappeared first?  What law explains the color change as a function of temperature change?

C)  Look at the spectrum of a color computer monitor showing a white screen.  Reproduce the spectrum as best you can in your lab book.  What type of spectrum is it?

D)	Before looking at and recording the spectrum of the light from a butane lighter, PREDICT – with explanation -- the type of spectrum you expect.  Compare the butane lighter’s spectrum to the spectra already observed above.

SECTION 2 (20 minutes)

Look at each of the 4 gas discharge sources individually. In order to see the wavelength or energy scales, you may need some room light.  And you’ll have to be close up to the light source in order to see enough light from it to make a spectrum.... be careful to neither stick a finger into a live part of the power source nor knock over the power source.  You can use the small (35 mm) holographic diffraction gratings here to see the spectrum more clearly (but the wavelength scales will be absent of course).  Try .not to leave the power on for more than one minute at a time as the bulbs become extremely hot.

Try to draw a representative spectrum.  (You might estimate the wavelength of 3 or 4 of the brightest lines in each source; if there are many lines in a certain part of the spectrum, you might note that too.) It would be nice if you were organized and had each spectrum spanning the same horizontal distance and aligned vertically one over the other in the lab book.  It would also be nice to have the four spectra large enough so that the entire set covered the whole page.  

Your ultimate goal is to try to identify each source.  Use the chart in Giancoli (p. 634) or a chart of atomic (and other) spectra on the bulletin board by my office (both Giancoli and the wall chart has at least 3 of the 4 gases you are looking at) or the wavelength list on the spectrometer face to identify the element.  Neither Giancoli nor the wall charts will have the correct relative intensities of the various lines, however!  

Hint: 3 of the 4 elements are normally gaseous at room temperature.

The spectrometers are not perfectly calibrated; therefore the values you estimate for the wavelengths may be incorrect by up to 10 nm but not more, I suspect.  For identification purposes, matching the pattern’s brightest lines (to those given in Giancoli or on the wall chart) is as important as matching specific numeric values of the wavelength.

B)  Check with the instructor at this point to make sure that you have correctly identified the 4 unknown sources.  

C)  When successful, use your work to identify the gas present in the fluorescent lights (actually the mini fluorescent light bulb that I used in class works far better).  The gas in the fluorescent lights is one of the 4 gases that you looked at in the gas discharge tubes, although the spectra may not look exactly the same (because they are at different temperatures than the fluorescent lights).  The best fluorescent lights to look at are the smaller portable ones. The spectrum of the gas in the overhead fluorescent tubes has an extra bright line compared to the spectrum of the same gas in the gas discharge tubes.

SECTION 4 (20 minutes) 

The Walker sections on diffraction and diffraction gratings [28(6)] are crucial for this part.  Determine the wavelength range of yellow light by using the overhead-with-grating and the interference condition for a diffraction grating.  There are 750 lines/mm engraved on the grating.   Measure the distances involved very very accurately, as part of your score on this section will be based on accuracy.  I think you want to start this section with a large beautifully-labeled diagram (barren of numbers, but not labeling symbols)…. You can then put the measurements for those symbolized quantities and then do your logical equation work with numbers not appearing in the equations until the very last line.

SECTION 3  (20 minutes)

Use one of the overhead projectors [or slide projector] (with an attached holographic grating) to produce a spectrum on one of the classroom walls; focus the spectrum onto the projection screen or a large piece of white paper taped onto the wall.  Remember that a slit is necessary to produce a spectrum.  Color filters and colored liquids are also available for use here.

A) Before placing the red color filter over the slit, predict (in writing, of course) what effect this will have on the appearance of the spectrum.  Then write what actually happens.  (Three columns, labeled with the filter color, your prediction, and then the actual results would be nice, huh?).  By the way, experiment with the width of the slit.... what happens when the slit width increases?  what happens if the slit width becomes too small?

Predict and try with the cyan filter.

B) Now try the bottles of colored fluids (3 plastic bottles: solutions of neodymium chloride, holmium chloride, and praseodymium chloride).  You aren’t expected to predict anything here in advance.  You may have to experiment with the slit width to see the narrow lines.  How does the absorption produced by the liquids differ from that produced by the color filters?

Should the slit width be adjusted in the same manner as it was for the color filters?

C) 

1) Now use the spectrometer to look at the spectrum of sunlight.  Aim the spectrometer at bright blue sky or a bright cloud (not directly at the sun).  Which of the 3 kinds of spectra do you see?  (You might want to be in a class room with that has no lights on.)  Once you have decided and written your answer in your lab book, you can turn over the sun spectrum chart to see what you were supposed to see. 

2) Did you see faint dark lines?  Record only those that you saw in a table along with any element identifications you can make.  For i.d. purposes, remember the table on the front of the spectrometer; the solar spectrum is also displayed on a separate chart lying around somewhere (with origins of the lines identified), and in Giancoli (p. 634).

SECTION 5 (20 minutes): anywhere on campus

Find a light source somewhere on campus that is fundamentally unlike those used in lab (not an incandescent opaque solid nor an opaque gas nor a transparent gas nor …).  Bring the light source to the physics floor, so that you can record its spectrum using the digital spectrometer you saw me use in class (for the incandescent light bulb, the mini fluorescent light, and the sun).  Observe and record its spectrum.  Find out about its light emission process from a book or the web and write a non-plagiaristic, coherent half-page to a page description of how the light is produced.

 QUESTIONS

1)  Which light sources in this lab produced a continuous spectrum (at least as far as you could tell)?  (I think there were at least 4.)   What did all of these sources have in common (besides emitting a continuous spectrum)?

2)  Most all of these continuous spectrum light sources produced something that we might fairly call “white light.”  What other sources of white light that you looked at in this lab did NOT produce a continuous spectrum?

3)  List the light sources or combinations that you observed that are examples of the Kirchhoff laws that aren’t about the production of continuous spectra.

4) The spectrum of a computer monitor (Section 1C) resembles that of at least one other light source in the lab.  Which?  (Is the physical state of the light source in the spectrum similar to anything else in the lab?  Explain what that is.)  

5)  Consider all the sources of dark line spectra.  In some cases you saw narrow dark lines and in other cases you saw dark bands; there were even some intermediate cases.  What general trend can you find in the property of the absorbing objects as you go from narrow lines to broader lines to bands?  Remind me and yourself of the three cases where saw dark lines/bands and their thicknesses first, however.

6) Did you see any 

a) violations of the textbook’s versions of  Kirchhoff’s laws in the lab?  Which?

b) omissions from the textbook's versions of Kirchhoff’s laws in the lab?  Which?