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by lahwran 2394 days ago
psa: you can get this thing, which isn't the most precise ever, but lets you see this spectral information about lights for cheap: https://www.amazon.com/EISCO-Premium-Quantitative-Spectrosco... - I got one and WHEW CFLs' band lines are really obvious. Also, I feel kind of tickled that I saw the band gap on LED lights before seeing a description of what it is in the source for the spectrum plots in this article (the source being https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:White_LED.png ).

I'm a bit miffed it seems so hard to find lights that don't have this problem, though. maybe we can improve it by getting the word out that these cheap little diffraction devices can give you a pretty good approximate reading of the smoothness of the spectrum of a light source. Hmm, I just realized I have yet to take this to home depot...

I'm really curious about those MIT incandescent bulbs. If they worked well and haven't been brought to market, it's possible that contacting the people involved in creating them could have good results in making them happen. Perhaps they could be convinced to prioritize it if a case can be made that it can have a significant positive impact on the world?