Recently the Ault group received our very own Raman spectrometer from Horiba Scientific. A Raman spectrometer is named after the Nobel Prize winning scientist Sir C. V. Raman. When light hits an object, some of the light is absorbed by that object (often results in that object warming up), and some of the light is scattered or reflected away. Sir Raman discovered that sometimes when light is scattered by an object, it's wavelength can slightly change (the color of light is determined by its wavelength), and that different chemical components can each change light in a consistent manner. If we shine a laser with a single, known wavelength on a sample, and measure the exact minor changes of that wavelength in the reflected light, we can determine the exact elemental composition of that sample! That is what a Raman spectrometer does (spectrometer means instrument that measures the properties of light). Pretty useful!
The Raman spectrometer is a highly sensitive piece of equipment and requires a very solid table to prevent unwanted vibrations from messing up the precise alignment of the lasers. The tables were bought separately and had to be assembled and bolted together.
Once the tables were ready, we had to carefully move the freshly unboxed Raman up on top of the table. It is quite heavy and required four people to lift it.
Horiba sent us a technician to complete the installation, hook up all the wires, and teach us all how to realign the lasers, use the data collection and manipulation software, and other basic troubleshooting procedures. Our technician was the well traveled Bill, who had been installing Raman spectrometers for over the past 20 years!
All in all, it was a busy week of heavy lifting and learning a textbooks worth of knowledge, but now its all done and we're ready to begin some experiments on our brand new Raman!
