This wiki page is collecting questions and statements of interest that have been expressed on the mailing lists or in person at barnraisings. Each of these could inspire a Spectral Challenge entry, so click "edit" to add yours below!

• I'm a gardener. Can i do my own soil testing? Usually i send away to a lab for a mineral profile, and to make sure there's nothing harmful in my soil before i plant food crops in it.
• I live near a refinery. How can i know what is being released in a smokestack plume?
• I'm an urbanite. When I look out over my city, i can see what i call "the smog layer". I can see that it changes on a daily, even hourly basis. Can i tell how much (and of what kind of) particles are in the atmosphere?
• I'm a surfer / fisherman / beach goer. Is this gunky stuff in the soil / on the beach just mud or is it a petrochemical spill?
• Im a health nut. Can i test my tap water for additives?
• I have a telescope. If i add a spectrometer to the end of it, can I identify what stars are made of?
• I'm a journalist. Can i collect my own data for an expose on an overpriced consumer product like liquid soap?
• I'm a 3d printer. I would like to take plastics from the waste stream and melt them into material I can print with, but often there are unsafe additives for fire resistance or electrical insulation enhancement. How can I test if bromine or chlorine are present in plastics before i melt the plastic in my lab?
• I'm into DIYBio. My holy grail is "a low cost small sample uv spectrophotometer for the quantification of dna, like http://www.nanodrop.com/". Is this possible?
• add your own here!
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