Taking School Instrumentation One Step Forward: A Do-It-Yourself Type Spectrophotometer and a Jupyter Notebook That Enable Real Time Spectroscopy during School Lessons

A major obstacle that teachers face when they begin their spectroscopy lessons is the lack of a spectrophotometer, mostly due to its relatively high cost. In the present study, the construction of a low-cost do-it-yourself type of instrument is reported. Its construction, as a part of a problem-base...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of chemical education 2023-07, Vol.100 (7), p.2704-2712
Main Authors: Mitsioni, Marianna Fanouria, Stouras, Miltiadis, Makedonas, Christodoulos
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Fluorescence
Instrumentation
Kinetics
Literacy
Science activities
Science education
Spectrophotometry
Spectroscopy
Spectrum analysis
Students
Teachers
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Summary:A major obstacle that teachers face when they begin their spectroscopy lessons is the lack of a spectrophotometer, mostly due to its relatively high cost. In the present study, the construction of a low-cost do-it-yourself type of instrument is reported. Its construction, as a part of a problem-based scenario, would also help students to enhance their chemical literacy. Moreover, the creation of a Jupyter Notebook called “Spectrophotometry” is also described. With this tool, students and teachers, within a few clicks, will derive absorption and fluorescence spectra and do kinetics studies without any difficulty and the need for time-consuming data postprocessing software. Finally, the views of a group of students on the construction and ease of use of our spectrophotometer are discussed in detail.
ISSN:0021-9584
1938-1328
DOI:10.1021/acs.jchemed.3c00248