A page from the "Causes of Color" exhibit...

Causes of Color · Museum shop

Museum Shop

A small selection of instruments, optical materials and reference books for exploring color first-hand — the things we wish we had owned when we first started looking into the physics of light. All Amazon links use the WebExhibits Associates tag and help support the exhibit.

See the Spectrum — Spectroscopes & Diffraction

  • Project STAR Precision Spectrometer

    Project STAR Precision Spectrometer

    Arbor Scientific · plastic, 31×18 cm

    A sturdy student spectrometer designed at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Look through the eyepiece at any light source and read its spectral lines off a built-in scale calibrated in nanometers and electron volts.

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  • Pocket Spectroscope

    Pocket Spectroscope

    Educational Innovations · brass, 130 mm extended

    A small handheld prism spectroscope with adjustable slit. Point it at the sun, a fluorescent tube or a sodium-vapor street lamp and see the difference between continuous, emission and absorption spectra.

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  • Diffraction Grating Glasses

    Diffraction Grating Glasses (Class Set)

    Rainbow Symphony · 500 lines/mm

    Cardboard spectacles with a holographic diffraction grating in each eye. The cheapest possible way to put a spectrum in front of every person at a dinner party. Useful for demonstrating the difference between LED, incandescent and discharge-lamp emission.

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Bend, Split & Polarize Light

  • Optical Glass Triangular Prism with Stand

    Optical Glass Triangular Prism with Stand

    Generic optical-glass equilateral prism

    An equilateral dispersing prism is the simplest tool for reproducing Newton’s 1666 experiment: aim a beam of sunlight or a flashlight through one face and a full visible spectrum spreads out the other side.

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  • Linear Polarizing Film, A3 Sheet

    Linear Polarizing Film, A3 Sheet

    Educational-grade polarizer, 0.2 mm

    A sheet of linear polarizer big enough to cut into multiple pieces. Cross two pieces and watch them go black; slide a strip of cellophane tape between them to see colored stress fringes (the standard photoelastic demonstration).

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  • Iridescent Dichroic / Holographic Window Film

    Iridescent Dichroic / Holographic Window Film

    Self-adhesive, 16×100 in roll

    A large sheet of multilayer interference film whose color shifts with viewing angle. The same physics — thin-film interference — that produces the colors of soap bubbles, oil slicks and beetle wing-cases.

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Reference & Atlas

  • The New Munsell Student Color Set

    The New Munsell Student Color Set

    Ron Reed · Fairchild / Bloomsbury (latest edition)

    A workbook of physical Munsell color chips and exercises organized by hue, value and chroma. The cheapest way to hold the Munsell color solid in your hands and see how the perceptual axes work.

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  • Gemstones of the World

    Gemstones of the World (Newly Revised 5th Edition)

    Walter Schumann · 2013

    The standard pocket gemology reference, with 1,500+ color photographs of gem species and their causes of color — transition-metal impurities, color centers, charge-transfer absorption, light scattering and diffraction in opal. General reader.

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More from Amazon

Browse a tagged search for further color-science instruments and books: color science instruments on Amazon →

Amazon links use the WebExhibits Associates tag webexhibits-causesofcolor-20; purchases support the exhibit. Product covers for the eight curated items live under /causesofcolor/imagesFolder/books/ (reference titles) and /causesofcolor/imagesFolder/products/ (instruments). Six of the instrument images are flagged TODO MANUAL pending an authorized product screenshot.

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