🚀 go-pugleaf

On Wed, 29 Mar 1995, Steve Luzader wrote:

>    Last fall there was an exchange on either phys-l or physhare about
> the "electric pickle".  I can't remember which, so I thought I'd send
> this to both in case anyone is interested.
........
> as the yellow light from the low pressure Na lamp, and they all
> concluded that the pickle must contain Na.  They really seemed to
> enjoy that part of the experiment.  (These are college students, and
> it's hard to get them excited about anything.)   I'm grateful to whoever
> it was who started the discussion about the electric pickle.  The next
> time I do this, I'm going to raid the chemistry stockroom and soak
> some cucumbers in a variety of salt solutions so we can observe
> other colors besides yellow.

I'm curious. With this equipment, how precisely were you able to determine
the yellow line(s)? +/- what? Could you resolve the yellow doublet? What
other stubstances give yellow lines within this range? If you had not
known that this was a pickle giving off the light would your students have
been so certain it was sodium? What is the range, +/- of yellow in the
visible spectrum, and how does this compare with your experimental
uncertainty? I.e., did the experiment tell you any more than the fact that
the light was yellow, which you could see with the unaided eye. When I
have observed the electric pickle, the color did not seem pure yellow to
me. I must look again more carefully. Were there any other spectral lines
present, indicating other sustances?

Seems to me Ron Edge was experimenting with pickling the cucumbers with
other chemicals, to get other colors. Has he published anything on that?

        -- Donald