An electronic spectroscope for classroom displays of visible spectra

This article is an electronic publication in Spectrochimica Acta Electronica (SAE), a section of Spectrochimica Acta Part B (SAB). The hardcopy text is accompanied by an electronic archive, stored on the SAE homepage at http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/sabe. The archive contains program, data and text files. The hardcopy text describes a program that has been developed to accept data from a compact electronic spectrograph and translate the data into a display on a computer screen. The computer display mimics the view seen through a direct vision spectroscope. Atomic spectra appear as vertical lines of the appropriate color dispersed on a black field. A conventional plot of intensity versus wavelength is simultaneously displayed. The update of the display is sufficiently rapid that the image on the screen is essentially a real-time representation of the light entering the spectrograph. The system was designed for use in conjunction with video projection equipment in demonstrations to large groups of students.