Sunshine- essential for life, and all the reactions we study. In order to study photochemistry in the lab (or on a boat!) we need to control the amount of sunshine in our experiments. We have been doing all of our work here in solar simulators, allowing us to quantify the light dose delivered to our samples--- and speed up our experiments (always good when you want to do a lot of them)!
OWe've been wondering how light in our solar simulators compares to sunlight in the Gulf of Alaska. Lucky for us, the past couple days have been bright and sunny, allowing us to make that comparison. We've been using an OL Laboratories spectroradiometer to take irradiance measurements on 1 nm intervals
(basically quantifying the light dose on a very fine scale). The picture to the left compares the light dose in our solar simulator to that on a sunny day here in the Gulf. The spectrum in our solar simulator isn't a perfect match to sunlight, but it does do a fairly good job of representing a solar spectrum.
Visible light ranges from 400 - 700 nm, so all light below 400 nm is in the UV, and the main driver of photochemical reactions. You can see that a good amount of UV light reaches the earth surface even when cloudy, so mom was right, always wear sunscreen!
-- Leanne
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| Optronic with the Mountains of Alaska in the Background |
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| Comparing Solar Spectra |
(basically quantifying the light dose on a very fine scale). The picture to the left compares the light dose in our solar simulator to that on a sunny day here in the Gulf. The spectrum in our solar simulator isn't a perfect match to sunlight, but it does do a fairly good job of representing a solar spectrum.
Visible light ranges from 400 - 700 nm, so all light below 400 nm is in the UV, and the main driver of photochemical reactions. You can see that a good amount of UV light reaches the earth surface even when cloudy, so mom was right, always wear sunscreen!
-- Leanne
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