The SpectraWizard’s Spectroscopy Application Challenge Results 2021

The SpectraWizard’s Spectroscopy Application Challenge has now officially ended! Spectroscopists from all over the world competed against each other for a chance to win over $5,000 in StellarCash. Please check out the winning spectroscopy applications below and don’t forget to check out our Back to School Spectrometer Specials available now through the end of September! Thank you to all the contestants, there were a ton of submissions and it was very hard to choose winners. We are all very happy with the turnout and the excitement for spectroscopy!

1st Place: 3D Printing and UV Curing for Recycling

Congratulations to Alex Stiles and Dustin Gilmer from the University of Tennessee for their winning spectroscopy application: 3D Printing and UV Curing for Recycling. Their 3D printer concept combines finely crushed glass with UV-curing photopolymers to print parts similar in strength and structure to a quartz countertop, but with a nearly infinite variety in geometry.

Once the printer is fully realized, they will be targeting applications in molds and tooling for the manufacturing sector, as well as architectural applications up to the scale of a house. In order to refine their printer concept, they need to be able to accurately predict when a 3D printed component will be fully cured with a variety of glass feedstocks and print layer heights. Because photopolymer cure kinetics are linked to UV light transmission, their team will need a spectrometer. They have already used a more basic radiometer to investigate the effect of varying photo initiator concentration on UV light transmission in their photopolymer, but will use a StellarNet spectrometer to collect full-spectrum data to build an accurate cure kinetics model.

2nd Place: Development of a Goniospectropolarimeter (GoSPo) using a Dual Channel Spectrometer for Leaf Surface Analysis

Congratulations to Reisha Peters from the University of Saskatchewan for her amazing application on leaf surface measurement and her submitted video “Dance of the GoSPo”.

Leaf surface properties such as waxiness, roughness, and hairiness can indicate plant health and relate to a plant’s ability to adapt to environmental stresses. Typically, it is difficult to measure these properties unless a leaf is removed from a plant and analyzed in specialized equipment. To develop leaf-light interaction models that could be used in the field for leaf surface analysis, a Goniospectropolarimeter (GoSPo) was developed with two StellarNet spectrometers (the BLUE-Wave and the DWARF-Star). Using six motors, a pneumatic system, the two spectrometers, and a combination of lenses, polarizers, and mirrors, GoSPo can examine a leaf from a particular angle and measure both reflectance and transmittance factors. These light measurements are aiding in model development to classify leaf surfaces and improve high throughput phenotyping of plants and crops.

3rd Place: Underwater Investigation of a Mantis Shrimp’s Visual System

Congratulations to Marisa McDonald from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa for her application: Underwater Investigation of a Mantis Shrimp’s visual system.

Marisa’s project involves the visual system of an extremely interesting animal, the stomatopod crustacean, commonly known as mantis shrimp, which live on coral reefs around the world. Adult mantis shrimp have the most complex eyes in the world, with 12 color channels (as opposed to 3 in humans), UV, and polarization vision. She focuses on the larvae, or the babies, which have completely different eyes, as they fully replace them upon metamorphosis to adults. Mantis shrimp larvae also live in a different environment than the adults, and are what is referred to as planktonic, meaning they float in the open ocean until it is time for them to settle as adults. While we know a lot about the adults, very little is known about the larvae. One method of increasing our understanding of how the larvae live are to investigate their visual systems. In order to be able to test and model vision, accurate measurements of the light environment an organism occupies are needed. However, properly measuring light levels can be challenging, and are often not properly measured by biologists studying a given system. While estimates of spectral composition of different environments can be used in visual models, a natural light environment can be changed by many factors, including time of day, location, depth, turbidity, and light pollution. Therefore, it is critical to have accurate, location specific light measurements when running visual models. In particular, the literature is lacking in irradiance measurements in underwater environments, which she aims to address with her research project. To take accurate underwater light measurements, She has put together an underwater housing to hold a UV-Vis StellarRAD handheld spectroradiometer (pictured). Marisa is currently in a testing period and has not taken this unit into the field yet but aims to start taking the housing into the water this Fall 2021. She will then take light measurements while scuba diving across different depths, times of day, and weather on Oahu, Hawaii to measure the light environment. These measurements, along with biological measurements, will be used to model mantis shrimp larvae visual systems.