Ocean Optics Overture - Manual (Page 10)

Chapter 1: Introduction to Spectroscopy
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If you want to find out how a motorcycle works, the best thing to do is take it apart to its individual pieces
and see what it’s made of. The same applies to light. If we can break it up using refraction or diffraction,
we can see what is going on at each wavelength.
Note
Try searching on the web for the words in blue .
Spectroscope views
Below are three spectra as seen through a traditional spectroscope.
This spectrum is of a tungsten filament lamp:
This is spectrum of sunlight. It is a similar continuous spectrum but it contains fine dark lines caused by
absorption of certain wavelengths in the sun and earth atmospheres. These are called
Fraunhofer lines .
This is an emission spectrum from a hydrogen gas discharge tube. It shows that the hydrogen gas only
emits light at certain wavelengths. Excited hydrogen atoms emit a specific series of narrow spectral lines
called the Balmer series.