Measure. Analyze. Learn.
Vernier has two sensors for measuring
ultraviolet radiation, ultraviolet light.
The UVA Sensor measures UV radiation
from 320 nanometers to 400 nanometers.
And the UVB, is 280 nanometers to 320 nanometers.
So that's kind of the range of those values.
Anything shorter than the 280 is called UVC,
these do not measure that.
And so, the reason we have two of these,
is depending upon where your source of
UV radiation is coming from.
If you're using sunlight, it tends to peak more in the UVB.
And so, this is one you might end up using more outdoors.
If you’re using it indoors, where you're creating a source
of UV radiation, such as this ultraviolet light, the black light,
then I might choose to use the UVA sensor for this one.
It's used in several labs, in the environmental book,
in the earth science manual,
where you're looking at UV radiation.
There's a nice sunscreen lab. There's one that we have here
with the sunglasses, and so, we could test different lenses, and
see how much UV radiation is block out by the various lenses.
So, it's an easy one to be able to show you
how this device works here.
So, I'm going to put the sensor into the clamp here.
I just want to be able to hold this relative to the UV source,
and hold it steady there, while I do my measurements here.
And so, at this point, I've got my sensor plugged in here.
And, I'm ready to plug it into my data collection device.
So, I've got a LabQuest 2.
And, I'm going to plug it into the unit there.
We see that our sensor is there.
It's giving me a reading right now, I have the light off,
there are a couple of things I could do here;
I might want to zero this sensor at this point, if I wanted to.
And now, when I turn the UV source on, we see that
as the light comes on there, that we are getting
an increase in the UV radiation.
As the light warms up, it's continuing to increase.
For this lab, what I would like to do is measure the
relative intensity as a terms of percent,
and not milliWatts per meter squared.
To do that, I need to change the units.
So, I'm going to change the units here, and do it as a percent.
And then, I also need to run a calibration, where I'm going to
tell it what's 100% of the UV coming, and what's 0%.
And so, to do that one, I need to come down and also
go to the meter, and do 'Calibrate …'.
And, I'm going to do 'Calibrate Now'.
And, I've got my light source on so I'm going to tap on there,
and I'm going to say that that, currently, that would be 100%
of the UV radiation is reaching the sensor.
So, I will say, 'Done'.
Then I tap the 'Keep' button.
So there is my first point.
And, at this point, I'm going to cover the UV sensor with
the film canister, and so I'm blocking it out.
And, I'm going to tell it that this point is 0%.
And, we'll say 'Done', and I hit 'OK'.
And, we now have the relative UV, so if I remove
the film canister, it goes back up to, basically, 100 there.
So, we're now ready to test the UV absorption
of some of our lenses here.
So, at this point, I'm going to press the collect button.
And, 100% of the UV radiation is reaching the sensor.
So, I'll just take one of our lenses, from one of our sunglasses
here, and I can hold it in there.
As we do that, we see the UV light level dropping there.
I pull it back out.
Can try a different lens. Maybe this one.
Put it in there. Pull it back out.
And I could use, maybe, my own glasses here.
We'll see what that does.
So, it's blocking out some of the UV.
Not quite as much as the sunglasses.
It's supposed to have a UV coating.
So, I'm not totally happy with that,
but that's what the data are showing there.
So, pull it back out,
And now, it's going to go back up to 100%.
At this point, probably have enough data, so I can hit stop.
And, we have our graph, and I might be interested in
what percent of the UV was blocked out by the different lenses
at the different points in time.
And so, I might come in here and just analyze
this section of the data.
Come in and, maybe, look at the stats for
that region of the graph.
And, I end up with the mean value 3.7%, is the only,
is the UV getting through.
I could come back and, maybe, look at the other area here.
So maybe, I come here, highlight that region.
Do the statistics there.
And, so I'm ending up with 0.8%, so it's still almost all of it.
And, if I wanted to look at my regular glasses,
I could come here, and do that section, where
I'm actually looking at my regular lenses of my glasses.
Maybe, do the stats there.
And, actually still about 17.8%, are getting through
my regular glasses there.
So, it's blocking out most of it, but not all of it.
So again, there are two UV Sensors.
We have the UVB, and the UVA, so depending upon what
UV radiation ranges you would expect,
you would use one or the other.
It's used in environmental work, in earth science work.
And so, there's some really interesting labs that do this one,
and it's something that can be very relevant
to students' everyday lives.