Re: [TCML] Do spectroscopy !

[jhowson4@xxxxxxxxxxx]

NIce!! 

You could try putting the grating in front of the camera without the lens system. Use a thick hunk of cardboard to black out everything around the grating. such that the only light hitting the ccd is light from the grating. Place the camera reasonably close, such that the line traverses the length of the ccd, then take a really fast shutterspeed picture. 
You are then essentially directly imageing the line, and you can use known pixel dimensions to figure out the line spacing and thus what everything is. using known lines as a basis. 



Thanks, 
John "Jay" Howson IV 


"Why thank you, I will be happy to take those electrons off your hands." 

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gerekos Christopher" <gerekos.christopher@xxxxxxxxx> 
To: tesla@xxxxxxxxxx 
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2012 10:02:09 PM 
Subject: [TCML] Do spectroscopy ! 

Hi everybody, 

Have you considered taking pictures of your firing Tesla coil with a 
diffraction grating ? This will split the light from the sparks in its 
different wavelengths, and as atoms have discrete energy levels, you'll see 
spectral lines. The results are pretty cute and interesting. Here's a 
sample : 

https://picasaweb.google.com/gerekos.christopher/ZeusTeslaCoil#5735887221955821042 
https://picasaweb.google.com/gerekos.christopher/ZeusTeslaCoil#5735887427519678690 
https://picasaweb.google.com/gerekos.christopher/ZeusTeslaCoil#5735887443085969298 

These photographs were taken with a 500 lines/mm diffraction film placed in 
front of the lens, with various shutter speeds. The arcs are about 30cm in 
length, that's somewhat short but it revealed important to have brighter 
sparks to get a nice spectrum. 

Identifying the spectral lines on the sole pictures must be quite 
challenging, but it is reasonable to argue nitrogen plays an important 
role. See: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=nitrogen+spectrum (look 
also for the ionized states). 

Have fun, 

Chris Gerekos. 
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