Chapter 5. Gadget: LED Photometer
A photometer is a device that measures one or more qualities of light. Most photometers consist of an interference filter and a photo detector. The interference filter is a colored piece of plastic or glass that filters out nonessential colors, letting through only the precise wavelengths of light we’re interested in studying. A photo detector behind that filter monitors the intensity of the light that makes it through the filter.
In this gadget, LEDs replace both the interference filter and the photo detector. As Forrest Mims showed, LEDs are photodiodes: diodes that generate electrical current proportional to the light that falls on them, and they act as their own color filter. As you learned from your own experiments ...
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