Spectral Challenge ideas
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?
- I'm a health nut. Can i test my tap water for additives?
- I love space and 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 into 3d printing. 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 before i melt the plastic and breathe that stuff?
- 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?
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