What Does a Negative Absorbance Reading Indicate?

[rick112]

hi

i know this is kind of a basic question..but what in reality does a negative absorbance reading means?? why can't the spectrometer just say its out the reading range or something??
does a negative reading really say something can we look at it and detect something...like if the negative reading is x that means it has so much of some component...

 

[johng23]

This sounds like a question for the spectrometer's manual perhaps...?

 

[Sybren]

that means your measurement is not well calibrated. a negative absorption from an excited sample would indicate stimulated emission

 

[Galap]

It seems like the spectrometer needs to be calibrated. It's like pushing the zero or tare on a balance. You manually set which point is called zero and the device reads other values with respect to that.