Everyone

Smartphone Spectrophotometry

Eclair

The shoebox spectrophotometer app allows your smartphone to be used as the light detecting (and absorbance calculating) part of a spectrophotometer. The rest of the spectrophotometer you will need to make yourself! 

This is the app used in the article, 'Demonstrating Principles of Spectrophotometry by Constructing a Simple, Low-Cost, Functional Spectrophotometer Utilizing the Light Sensor on a Smartphone', published recently in the Journal of Chemical Education, http://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.7b00548 

There is an overview of how this can be done simply from a shoebox, a DVD and some building block on the YouTube link below.

Please note, your smartphone must have a light sensor for this app to work

Have fun!

Demonstration screencast: https://youtu.be/1NgzXpFDh7o

Spectrophotometer app, uses phone's light sensor to measure absorbance of light

Shoebox spectrophotometer

Shoebox spectrophotometer

Latest Version of Shoebox spectrophotometer

Other versions