The actinometry study was done for the past week and a half with the help of the team we managed to find great data and let’s just say Dr. Sebree was extremely excited. Actinometry is a study that determines the number of photons in a beam. We started by setting up the actinometry chamber and hooked it up to a tank of dinitrogen monoxide (laughing gas) and a thermometer to the side of the chamber.
Our portable actinometry chamber
The chamber was filled to a pressure the pressure and temperature were then recorded as soon as the lamp was turned on. Each run was done for 10 minutes in those ten minutes all I had to do was make sure the chamber was running and stop it at the correct time. After the run was finished the temperature and pressure were recorded and used to find the photons emitted by the lamp.
Lamps with benzene films coating them
We used several different lamps for this at different life spans in order to determine how much the time amount of hours used affects the photons emitted by the lamp. We also compared dirty vs clean lamps by letting the lamps run for 20 hours after calculating it when it was clean. This simple but effective study gave us great data and Dr. Sebree will be presenting this at the Iowa Academy of Science conference.
--Jose Lopez
--Jose Lopez