EISCO Premium Quantitative Spectroscope - 400-700nm Range, 5nm Accuracy

I bought this prior to doing my own experiments with gratings I have purchased. It is kind of fun to compare old compact fluorescents with their peaky spectrums to more modern LED's and their more continuous spectra. The slit is pretty wide so I tightened it up with some black electrical tape. This made the spectrum fainter so it required brighter light, but the lines are narrower and crisper. The pic I shared is a compact fluorescent with the tighter slit.The 405 and 436 nm mercury lines are in the right place on my unit, but the bright green from mercury should be at ~546. There should be a twin peak at 577 and 579 due to mercury, but there appears to be a lot more going on in this lamp. I found that Fluorescents have other elements Terbium and Europium. Terbium makes the broad cyan peak at 487 nm and europium a bright red peak at 611nm. You can see that the scale on my unit shows this last peak at just below 600nm so it is off by at least 12nm by this end of the scale. Still great fun!Of note, older (40-50+) and/or farsighted users will not be able to view the scale in focus, but younger users should have no problem. Have fun!

This spectroscope shows a spectra that generally matches a lab spectrometer which generates a plot of the frequency amplitudes. More range can be seen at the blue and red ends of the spectra by using a camera to take a picture of the spectrometer's image, but it is hard to line the camera up with the spectrometer and the spectrometer with the light source. The lab showed spikes for a specialty light source in the blue/purple, green, and orange areas with lower amplitude between those colors. The spikes could be seen on the spectroscope photo as 3 over saturated, blooming colors popping out of the rest of the rainbow of color at generally the same wavelengths as the lab measurements. There was not a way to dim the light source to get a better photo of the peak wavelengths. I would like a cell camera mount and light attenuation filters for better photos and 5 stars. Other than that, it works fine.

This is essentially the same spectroscope that I used in chemistry class to observe various light bulbs and burning chemicals. I am using it to test filters to see the wavelengths of light that they allow to pass. It works as expected. I really appreciate that the nanometer scale is so accurate. I tested its accuracy with a fluorescent bulb and a green laser (indirectly). See the attached images that show the respective wavelength patterns. I took the pictures by just placing my cell phone camera over the eye hole. This spectroscope is simple to use and seems durable.

I liked that this spectroscope was cheap.It can be improved by cleaning up the slit where there was excess plastic from the injection molding.The next improvement was to make a more narrow slit out of two pieces of aluminum foil taped on the slit with the straight edges of the foil used closer together than the existing slit. These pieces could also be moved to change the slit size. I chose this over razor blades to keep it safer for my daughter.Next I plan to carefully open it up and cover the inside with black felt or matte black tape of some sort. The reflections inside the box produce extra spectrums that can overlap with the one of interest causing confusion.

It works great! Shows exactly the wavelength range of the light it's pointed at. Make sure all other lights except the one you are testing are turned off to get the most accurate reading. I used this for testing lights that I use in my photography darkroom. I also used it for making custom grow lights. It works great for the price.

This does not work. Any light source you point it at it will display the full color spectrum, no variation. Completely useless for determining the wavelengths of light.

I teach 8th grade physical science and use these as part of a station during our visible light unit. My students have no problem using them and they’re great in helping them visualize how light is made up of a spectrum of colors.

Grandson wants to be a 'quantum guy' so this is useful. He isn't making measurements with this but does see qualitative comparisons with several light sources. I bought him a green laser pointer with a front set of crossed diffraction gratings for projection. These two provide endless experimentation. We need more educational kit like these.