I collect pure element samples and take pictures of their spectra.
Spectroscopy, especially of unbound atoms, has been an interest of mine for a long time. The modern era of online shopping has made it possible to obtain element samples and independently observe their colorful lines firsthand in order to know how they really look. NIST of course offers their own publicly available database of lines and line intensities, and somewhere I have a copy of an old edition of MIT Wavelength Tables. The latter seems to be better overall at estimating how bright the lines really look relative to each other, but I still found some discrepancies. So I decided to collect as many elements as I could and double check the spectra myself. These photos are a result of that effort.
