Application of advanced spectrometer in geometrical optics?

This spectrometer is useful for looking at atomic and molecular spectra. A very nice experiment would be to examine the spectrum of a propane or butane flame. The blue color of the flame is primarily due to emission from electronically excited C2. The major structure in the spectrum is due to the quantization of vibration in the excited and ground electronic states. c.f. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_band

You can also measure the spectra of discharge lamps. It is interesting to look at the difference between hydrogen and deuterium lamps -- assuming that you can get access to a discharge lamp power supply with H and D lamps. Google "spectrum tube power supply" and "spectrum tube" to see where to buy these/what these look like. The power supply is ca. $100, the tubes are ca. $20/ea.

 

I see. The only thing that I can think of is to do some work measuring refractive indices of materials (Snell's Law). With a small set of laser pointers, you could measure the change in refractive index as a function of wavelength (dispersion curves) for some simple solid materials. If you have a "water prism" you could also measure this for some pure liquids.

 

Strictly speaking, I don't see how this is possible- geometrical optics is wavelength independent, and chromatic aberrations are likely beyond what you are thinking.

I suppose you could do some version of Snell's law, Fresnel reflection/transmission coefficients, etc if you have a monochromatic light source. Maybe something with double refraction (uniaxial crystal optics). But all of these are ad-hoc excuses for using the instrument, as opposed to actually learning something.

Why did you guys decide to use this for a geometrical optics lab, as opposed to a wave optics lab?