Spisak 1 Christie Spisak Mr.

McKinley Chemistry January 3, 2011 Introduction to Spectrophotometry By definition, spectrophotometry is the quantitative measurement of the reflection or transmission properties of a material as a function of wavelength. In class, we learned that light is a series of very tiny electric and magnetic forces, alternating in direction and intensity. Light is all around us, yet most of us do not understand it or know what it does. To our surprise, we learned that light has the power to change the way electrons move around the nucleus. Niels Bohr drew on Max Plancks equation: E = hf. Max Planck discovered that light energy is quantized, meaning that it comes in indivisible packages. In other words, a certain type of light can only cause a specific change. In his equation, E is the energy of light, h is Plancks constant, and f is the frequency. Max Plancks equation states that the energy of light is equal to the constant times the frequency. Plancks constant is 6.626 * 10^-34 J/Hz. When solving word problems, E is often referred to as energy of light, one quantum of light, or one photon of light. Plancks equation can help us figure out what light can do. Light can be described as a wave in motion. We learned that a wavelength is the distance between two neighboring, corresponding points on a wave. For wavelength, I always found it helpful to try and visualize the waves. You can picture the distance a snowboarder might travel, from one peak to the next, in a second. This visualization can also help you with frequency. Frequency is the number of peaks that pass a point each second. The units for frequency can be written as per second, in a fraction form (one over s), with an exponent (s raised to the

Spisak 2 negative first power), or hertz (Hz). One thing to remember is that you can not tell the faster of two things, even if you know the frequency, because you do not know the wavelength. There is a relationship between wave speed, wavelength (), and frequency. You can find the velocity of the wave by multiplying the wavelength by the frequency (V = f). In this section, we learned that light travels at 3.00 * 10^8 m/s. We have often heard the phrase speed of light, but, now, we can say that we know what that speed is. Spectrophotometry is more specific than the term electromagnetic spectroscopy because spectrophotometry deals with visible light, near-ultra violet, and near-infrared, but it does not cover time-resolved spectroscopic techniques. In spectrophotometry, a spectrophotometer is used. A spectrophotometer is a photometer that can measure intensity as a function of the light source wavelength. Spectral bandwidth and linear range of absorption measurement are two of the important features of spectrophotometers. Spectrophotometers are frequently used in many industries, like printing and forensic examination, as well as laboratories for the study of chemical substances. Depending on the control or calibration, a spectrophotometer is ultimately able to determine what substances are present in a target and exactly how much through calculations of observed wavelengths. You can find a spectrophotometer being used in various scientific fields, such as physics, chemistry, biochemistry, and molecular biology.

Sources My notes! "Spectrophotometry." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. July 2008. Web. 03 Jan. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrophotometry>.