Design of an inexpensive integrating sphere student laboratory setup for the optical characterization of light sources

In this paper, the design of an inexpensive integrating sphere setup is presented, enabling students to perform optical characterization of light sources with reasonable accuracy, in a student laboratory context. Instead of using an expensive sphere with magnesium oxide or barium sulfate coating, a cheap polystyrene sphere is employed. In combination with a low-cost USB spectroradiometer, the system enables the direct measurement of the spectral radiant power of a light source. In addition to the radiant power, the luminous flux, luminous efficacy, and distinctive colorimetric quantities (colour coordinates, colour temperature, and colour rendering index) can be determined. Besides a description of the equipment used, the experimental measurement procedure and some typical measurement results are presented. A comparison between the data and the results obtained with scientific metrology instrumentation indicates reasonable accuracy. As a result, it can be concluded that the purpose of the presented experiments, being that students become acquainted with applications of radiometry and photometry, and with data collection and data analysis as in a professional context, is fully achieved with the described test setup. (paper)