Construction and Evaluation of a LEGO Spectrophotometer for Student Use

Knagge, Kevin; Raftery, Daniel

doi:10.1007/s00897020615a

Cited by 31 publications

(35 citation statements)

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“…In some activities in which the students built a full-fledged visible spectrophotometer (Bougot-Robin, Paget, Atkins, & Edel, 2016;Knagge & Raftery, 2002;Wilson & Wilson, 2017) and a fluorescence microscope (Varra et al, 2020), LEGO bricks were employed as the frame of the instruments or as holders to secure the components, such as the slit, mirror, prism, and quartz cell. In some reports, a hole was drilled in the LEGO brick to create the moving part of the spectrometer.…”

Section: Full-fledged Visible Spectrophotometer and Fluorescence Micrmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching chemistry with LEGO^® bricks

Horikoshi

2020

Chemistry Teacher International

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Teachers are developing unique teaching aids to attract students to the field of chemistry. Ideal teaching aids are tools that students can enjoy utilizing, reutilizing, and which can be constructed without employing special tools. LEGO®-based teaching aids satisfy all these requirements. Chemistry teachers have employed bricks to illustrate basic chemical concepts. Moreover, LEGO-based chemistry teaching aids have been vigorously reported by Campbell and coworkers since the late 1990s and are still being persistently reported by several groups. The focus of this review is the applications of LEGO bricks in teaching chemistry. This review describes LEGO-based teaching aids that are easily constructed and may be beneficial to readers, in terms of creating new teaching aids. Since LEGO bricks possess varieties of shapes and colors, they can be employed to design various teaching aids, including periodic tables, molecular models, polymer structure models, and frameworks for handmade measuring instruments. The polymeric structure models are generally difficult to build with typical ball-and-stick type molecular models; however, they can be easily built, employing LEGO bricks. The bricks are suitable for the construction of handmade measuring instruments because of their versatility and computer interface, as well as their non-requirement of special tools.

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Section: Full-fledged Visible Spectrophotometer and Fluorescence Micrmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching chemistry with LEGO^® bricks

Horikoshi

2020

Chemistry Teacher International

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“…Knagge et al [5] built spectrometer with a light bulb, diffraction grating and LEGO block for construction of optical support elements. In this present work, a portable, microcontrolled and a cost effective spectrophotometer having 60 Watt bulb as a light source and a CD media as a diffraction grid for measurements using the visible region was developed.…”

Section: Introduction (Heading 1)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Microcontroller based spectrophotometer using compact disc as diffraction grid

2010

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This paper describes the design and implementation of a portable, inexpensive and cost effective spectrophotometer. The device combines the use of compact disc (CD) media as diffraction grid and 60 watt bulb as a light source. Moreover it employs a moving slit along with stepper motor for obtaining a monochromatic light, photocell with spectral sensitivity in visible region to determine the intensity of light and an amplifier with a very high gain as well as an advanced virtual RISC (AVR) microcontroller ATmega32 as a control unit. The device was successfully applied to determine the absorbance and transmittance of KMnO 4 and the unknown concentration of KMnO 4 with the help of calibration curve. For comparison purpose a commercial spectrophotometer was used. There are not significant differences between the absorbance and transmittance values estimated by the two instruments. Furthermore, good results are obtained at all visible wavelengths of light. Therefore, the designed instrument offers an economically feasible alternative for spectrophotometric sample analysis in small routine, research and teaching laboratories, because the components used in the designing of the device are cheap and of easy acquisition.

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“…Among them, one can mention the development of prototypes for measuring relative changes of tissue blood flow and oxygenation [5]; parameters of ripeness in wine grapes [6]; and ABO, Rh phenotype, reverse, and crossmatching human blood typing [7]. Some of these prototypes have been developed for educational use using LEGO R pieces for constructing the optical support elements [8], [9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development, Testing, and Validation of a Prototype for Qualification of Substances Based on Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

2019

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Some commercial equipment used to qualify substances in complex mixtures employs the principle of observation of the interaction of these substances with electromagnetic radiation. The chemical bonds present in the molecules of the substance absorb specific wavelengths, allowing for extracting important information about the physical properties of the analyzed element. However, such equipment is expensive, hampering access to it. With new optoelectronic components available in the market, it is possible to develop devices with the same operating principle of commercial equipment. With this in mind, several authors have suggested prototypes with a lower cost that are applicable to the ultraviolet and visible range, making their development less complex. This paper presents the development of an optoelectronic prototype for substance qualification using LEDs as the light source, with emission in the range of 1400-2250 nm (nearinfrared range). A GaInAsSb-based photodiode was used to detect the signal. The sampling mode used in the development of this work was diffuse reflection, which is applicable to non-homogeneous substances. Bandpass filters were employed to validate the methodology, where the results show that the prototype can perceive the variation of the intensity of the spectrum received by the sensor. INDEX TERMS Optoelectronic devices, instrumentation and measurement, infrared sensor, optical filters, light emitting diodes. The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Jiang Wu.

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Construction and Evaluation of a LEGO Spectrophotometer for Student Use

Cited by 31 publications

References 1 publication

Teaching chemistry with LEGO^® bricks

Teaching chemistry with LEGO^® bricks

Microcontroller based spectrophotometer using compact disc as diffraction grid

Development, Testing, and Validation of a Prototype for Qualification of Substances Based on Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

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Construction and Evaluation of a LEGO Spectrophotometer for Student Use

Cited by 31 publications

References 1 publication

Teaching chemistry with LEGO® bricks

Teaching chemistry with LEGO® bricks

Microcontroller based spectrophotometer using compact disc as diffraction grid

Development, Testing, and Validation of a Prototype for Qualification of Substances Based on Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

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Teaching chemistry with LEGO^® bricks

Teaching chemistry with LEGO^® bricks