Experimentingwithaluxmeterandexploringilluminance.PDFVIP

Physics Teachers’ Inventions Fair 12 Experimenting with a luxmeter and exploring illuminance JÁN DEGRO Faculty of Science, UPJS Košice, Slovakia This paper presents ideas for experiments and projects measuring illumination with a luxmeter. The activities are suitable for basic and secondary school pupils. 1. Luxmeter The main purpose of photometry is to measure visible radiation in a manner that corresponds to human eye perception. To gain such re- sults, one has to consider the physical properties of light stimuli as well as the basic characteristics of eyesight. The most common task of photometry is to measure illuminance in luxes. The intensity of illumination – illuminance – is measured by a lux- meter. A common luxmeter consists of the measuring device itself and a sensor. The sensor is made of selenium or silicon photocells. A schematic sketch of a gate photo- cell can be seen in fig. 1.a. Such a photocell is not yet suitable for measuring illumi- nance since it does not fulfil the most significant requirement – its spectral sensitivity is different from human eye. Comparison of photocell and human eye sensitivity can be seen in fig. 2. A luxmeter that does not have an eye correction should not be used for measurements of this type [1]. Special attention should also be paid to another part of a luxmeter – the cosine adapter. Fig. 1.b depicts a cosine adapter by Harting-Helweig and one by Reeb- Tosberg. A photocell without a cosine adapter would produce measurement error proportional to the angle of incidence of the light [1]. Fig.1a: Gate photocell. Fig. 2: Comparison of photocell and eye Fig.1b: Types of cosine adapters [1]. sensitivity. V - Eye spect