Hello, our open hardware company, IO Rodeo, has designed an Open Colorimeter which you can see pictured below.
We designed the colorimeter to be easy to make, small and portable so it’s really ideal for teaching labs and classrooms. There are quite alot of ways this could be used for teaching science, but generally chemistry, biochemistry and environmental science. It can be used in any science experiment where a spectrophotometer is typically used. Spectrophotometers and extremely expensive and not usually available in school settings, whereas the colorimeter is affordable ($180 to buy or make). You could imagine that a small group or pair of students could each use one at their desk or bench making hands-on learning more accessible!
As you can see from the image above, it has a screen so it doesn’t need to be plugged into a computer or laptop to use. It is also customizable for more advanced students. The Python code is all open source and can be used to teach Python programming. However, you do not need to do any programming to use it.
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The Open Colorimeter is open hardware certified by OSHWA
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Product guide plus tutorials here: Open Colorimeter Product Guide
Below is an example of a hands-on lab for measuring the amount of blue food dye in sports drinks. This can be adapted to the appropriate grade level I would imagine:
We have some more examples but please let us know if you have any feedback or questions.
Thanks!