Neon, Art, Science, Technology, and History With Some Anectdotes For Your Amusement
Another look at that mess.
I do not normally post things here on any schedule and will often go a while between posts, but after yesterday’s post, I had a few more ideas and thoughts and decided to throw them together into this quick follow-up. For those wanting the full story that lead to this, please refer to: http://www.novioljourneys.com/?p=1140
I had decent results with what I did yesterday, at least visually to the eye…but the photography limitations of my phone made conveyance of this less than satisfactory to me. I also did not want to dig out my real camera gear for this as the required processing and scanning would have delayed the results–possibly beyond leaving for my next work trip……and nobody wants to wait that long, right? So I did a few things differently, edited some of the photos from yesterday for exposure, and shot a few new ones as well which came out much better. So here they are:
Naked eye view of two nearly identical neon tubes. Both appear red as they should be.The same tubes above, but viewed through the blue and green filter stack. The difference is readily apparent. (note that this set of exposures worked much better for this illustration than yesterday’s.)
After getting that a bit more sorted, I then took a few other new photos through the little spectroscope which you may find interesting…
Kyp carbon filament lamp, a modern reproduction of the incandescent lighting of the late 1800’s.A look at the spectrum from the carbon filament lamp. GE R2A neon glow lamp.Spectrum of neon glow lamp. Note that the pattern is very much like that of the “good” tube from yesterday’s exercise…which is encouraging.AR1 Argon filled glow lamp. Spectrum of argon glow lamp. While it covers a wide range, note that most of it is towards the violet end of the spectrum. These lamps were sometimes used in ultraviolet contact printers.A luminous tube filled with a gas mix of 75% Neon and 25% Argon and having Mercury added. This is a standard cold weather outdoor mix for blue and phosphor coated colors of neon units.Spectrum of the 75/25 gas mix tube. Note the strong violet end with a peak of green and just a small amount of the orange, and no obvious red end. If this had been a straight Ar/Hg unit the orange portion would likely be even less visible here.
