A low-cost spectrometer to analyse the purity of honey

Abstract

Light spectrum dispersion is an exciting subjectin science because of its beautiful atmospheric colour phenomenon which attracts students. However, to see the phenomenon is not easy since it needs a spectrometer, which is commonly expensive. Therefore, the present study aims to describe a low-cost spectrometer for investigating lighting spectrum and analysing the purity of honey as a pedagogical students’ project. The spectrometer was constructed from a webcam connected to a laptop, a free spectrometer software, DVD disk, and black cardboard. The calibration of the developed spectrometer used an Argon (Ar) lamp. Afterwards, measurement tests were carried out by using Neon (Ne) and Xenon (Xe) lamps. A white light-emitting diode was used as a light source to measure several types of honey wavelengths. The results from the experiment show that the wavelength of Ar, Ne, and Xe are (503 ± 4) nm, (463 ± 3) nm, and (451 ± 3) nm respectively. The measurement accuracy of the spectrometer is 99.5%. In addition, the commercial honey characterisations show that pure honey tends to have an excellent and smooth spectrum with one peak. On the contrary, the adulteries honeys show a rough wave with many peaks representing the inhomogeneous ingredients. It is found that the average accuracy for honey spectrum is 99.8%. Moreover, the low-cost spectrometer can be built and used easily by students for educational purposes.

Low-cost optical home-lab experiments

“…Using compact disks as diffraction gratings to perform diffraction experiments by multiple slits is very well-known and has been previously described by many authors (see, for example, [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]). It was also recently tested as a home-lab experiment during the lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic [14].…”