Carolina ChemKits®: Smartphone Spectroscopy

Connect students and science through their smartphones while introducing them to visible light spectroscopy fundamentals. In this lab, students measure the transmittance of light through standard solutions of Red Dye No. 40 with a smartphone, a color analyzer application, the Carolina® Spectroscopy Chamber, and a spectrophotometry technique. Using the collected data, students create a Beer-Lambert plot to determine the concentration of the food dye in popular powdered drink mixes.