Procedure

I.

Calibrating the Student Spectrometer

The telescope was focused at infinity by focusing it on a distant object. The

collimator slit was ensured to be partially open. The telescope was then aligned
opposite to the collimator. The focus of the collimator was adjusted by looking
through the telescope and making sure that the slit is into sharp focus. The
collimator slit width was adjusted to be as small as possible. The telescope was
tightened and the fine adjust knob was used to align the crosshair to one of edges of
the slit images. The slit was adjusted to obtain a clear, bright image. Every object
was ensured to be all focused and adjusted.
The diffraction grating was made to be perpendicular to the optical axis. The
100 lines/mm diffraction grating was placed on the spectrometer. The mercury lamp
was lit and was moved next to the collimator slit. The light exiting the collimator tube
was considered as the incident at the middle of the diffraction grating.
The position of the central diffraction line or the direct image was measured
using the Vernier scale. It was taken into account that the zero degree mark of the
Vernier scale is not aligned with the optical axis and that the light passing through
the diffraction grating is diffracted to the left and right of the optical axis. The left
reading was recorded as ocw and the right was occw . The magnifying glass was
used to have a clearer view of the scale. The telescope was rotated clockwise. The
position of the first-order green spectral line diffracted to the left of the optical axis
was measured to be cw . The telescope was rotated counter-clockwise. The position
of the first-order green spectral line diffracted to the right of the optical axis was
measured to be ccw . If the calculated values result to| cw - ocw | = | ccw - occw | then
the diffraction grating is perpendicular to the optical axis but if the absolute difference
is greater than 30o then, the grating would have been re-aligned and another trial
would have been performed.