Rainbows, natural phenomena that produce beautiful spectrums of coloured light in the sky, inspire myth and legend and art and give happiness to millions of people.

Just as natural rainbows are created by how sunlight plays through water droplets in the atmosphere, we can artificially create our own rainbows using prisms. There are many scientific applications of rainbows, and one is ‘Spectrophotometry’!

A spectrophotometer is a scientific instrument used to measure how different wavelengths of light (the different colours of light seen in the rainbow are different wavelengths) are absorbed by a sample. This analysis can tell us all sorts of things, and these instruments (first made in the 1940s) have played a huge role in modern science, especially biochemistry.

In this Instructable, we’re going to make a basic Arduino-powered spectrophotometer, using a little prism to create and use our own rainbow. We’ll make a lot of use of 3D printing, and also learn about lots of other things along the way.

The project video gives a short overview of the project, but please read on through the Instructable for full instructions too!