2 ms·

Can you give us some insight on the whole pesticide thing? How is it possible to detect it with a spectrometer in general? Are you sure that it is impossible t

by nom 10y ago

Can you give us some insight on the whole pesticide thing? How is it possible to detect it with a spectrometer in general? Are you sure that it is impossible to detect it, even if the app is 'calibrated' to a certain object, e.g. an apple? I think if you limit the search space it could be possible!?

highd 10y ago
The pesticide probably doesn't look very different in the visible spectrum at that low of a concentration - otherwise its presence would be pretty easily detectable to the human eye. If you require detection capabilities exceeding the human eye you're going to need a much more sensitive setup. Most chemicals have characteristic spectra in the infrared, so you'd need sensors going to much larger wavelengths to have significant difference - even then it would be hard to detect against the variation in signal from fruit.
kortex 10y ago
It's impossible. Most chemicals of interest are pretty boring in the visible spectrum. I'd say >95% of pure substances I've worked with - everything from pesticides to pharmaceuticals - are some variant on "white to off-white solid" or "clear to amber liquid." White/clear indicates that all photons visible to us interact with the materially equally. You get tans, yellows, and browns largely from high-frequency (deep blue/purple part of the spectrum) being absorbed by assorted chemical bonds. Spectroscopy is predominantly done with UV (200-280 nm most common) and IR, which are regions where photonic interaction is dominated by electronic and vibration/rotational transitions, respectively. Visible light absorption is typically caused by highly conjugated bonds and metal-coordination complexes. In terms of day-to-day, this is almost exclusively dyes (synthetic and natural). Dyes also tend to be really potent absorbers - you only need minuscule amounts of them to create very vivid colors. So a purely visible-light-based app would at best be able to give you a handle of what sort of dyes are in something. It won't tell you if it has pesticides (let alone traces!) or HFCS or nutrients or what-have-you. tl;dr - no, it's not remotely possible to even detect pesticides with visible light.

by nom 10y ago

highd 10y ago

The pesticide probably doesn't look very different in the visible spectrum at that low of a concentration - otherwise its presence would be pretty easily detectable to the human eye. If you require detection capabilities exceeding the human eye you're going to need a much more sensitive setup. Most chemicals have characteristic spectra in the infrared, so you'd need sensors going to much larger wavelengths to have significant difference - even then it would be hard to detect against the variation in signal from fruit.

kortex 10y ago

It's impossible. Most chemicals of interest are pretty boring in the visible spectrum. I'd say >95% of pure substances I've worked with - everything from pesticides to pharmaceuticals - are some variant on "white to off-white solid" or "clear to amber liquid." White/clear indicates that all photons visible to us interact with the materially equally. You get tans, yellows, and browns largely from high-frequency (deep blue/purple part of the spectrum) being absorbed by assorted chemical bonds. Spectroscopy is predominantly done with UV (200-280 nm most common) and IR, which are regions where photonic interaction is dominated by electronic and vibration/rotational transitions, respectively. Visible light absorption is typically caused by highly conjugated bonds and metal-coordination complexes. In terms of day-to-day, this is almost exclusively dyes (synthetic and natural). Dyes also tend to be really potent absorbers - you only need minuscule amounts of them to create very vivid colors. So a purely visible-light-based app would at best be able to give you a handle of what sort of dyes are in something. It won't tell you if it has pesticides (let alone traces!) or HFCS or nutrients or what-have-you. tl;dr - no, it's not remotely possible to even detect pesticides with visible light.