If you’ve been following (and I know one or two of you are), then you know that FeAtHEr-Cm is my Adafruit Feather microcontroller-based approach to building scientific instrumentation for the chemistry teaching laboratory. Not only does the platform allow for inexpensive instruments to be distributed throughout a classroom (at under $50/unit, each student in an analytical chemistry lab could have their own potentiostat), but the instruments are designed so that students can understand what makes them tick.

Joining the team is the btm100 which is a spectroscopic instrument designed to perform turbidity and nephelometry experiments. These techniques help scientists explore heterogenous solutions by measuring their cloudiness, and the techniques are used widely in fields such as environmental analysis. As an added bonus, the response from turbidity/nephelometry measurements mimics that of absorption/fluorescence measurements which are commonly covered early in the chemistry curriculum, so we have a fine opportunity to build on fundamental concepts (Beer’s Law) while expanding the suite of tools students are exposed to.