[Academic] Q: What's a spectroscopist for? A: environmental spectroscopy!

[Kevin O'Donnell]

Those of you who wash your hands occasionally will have noticed an odd blue light emerging from the new hand driers in the, ahem, toilets.

The Semiconductor Spectroscopy team of Singh, Edwards and O’Donnell have undertaken a spectral analysis of the afore-mentioned blue light by means of Akhilesh’s laptop, Paul’s computer interfacing and my standing around asking ‘is it working yet?’.

We are happy to announce that our efforts were crowned with success and the results are in!

Figure 1 compares the spectrum of light emitted in coincidence with hand dessicification by a Mighty Warm Wind from the drier with something actually useful.
The light is true blue with a narrow peak near 475 nm. This was a huge disappointment to one member of the team who had hoped to see something else.

As can be seen from Fig. 1, the overlap with a spectrum (stolen from Google) showing the germicidal effectiveness of UV light is quite difficult to estimate; we reckon about 0±10%, approximately.

So there you have it. Next time you wash your hands (or starting now if you so decide) you can admire the pretty blue light and be assured that it is doing you no (anti-bacterial) good whatsoever.

Our next project will be to search for the little fluorescent dots that are supposed to be embedded in the new pound coins.


With best regards,


KP O’Donnell, on behalf of the Authors.


Kevin Peter O'Donnell
Professor of Semiconductor Spectroscopy
SUPA Physics Department
Strathclyde University
Glasgow G4 0NG
Scotland, UK.

email: k.p.odonnell at strath.ac.uk<mailto:k.p.odonnell at strath.ac.uk>
web: http://ssd.phys.strath.ac.uk/index.php/Main_Page
tel: 0141 548 3365/3458

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