Lesson plan
Grism
A grism (also called a grating prism) is a combination of a prism and grating arranged so that light at a chosen central wavelength passes straight through. The advantage of this arrangement is that one and the same camera can be used for both imaging (without the grism) and spectroscopy (with the grism) without having to be moved. Grisms are inserted into a camera beam that is already collimated. They then create a dispersed spectrum centered on the object's location in the camera's field of view. The resolution of a grism is proportional to the tangent of the wedge angle of the prism in much the same way as the resolutions of gratings are proportional to the angle between the input and the normal to the grating. The dispersed wavefront sensing system (as part of the NIRCam instrument) on the James Webb Space Telescope uses grisms. The system allows coarse optical path length matching between the different mirror segments.
Article summary
A grism (also called a grating prism) is a combination of a prism and grating arranged so that light at a chosen central wavelength passes straight through. The advantage of this arrangement is that one and the same camera can be used for both imaging (without the grism) and spectroscopy (with the grism) without having to be moved. Grisms are inserted into a camera beam that is already collimated. They then create a dispersed spectrum centered on the object's location in the camera's field of view. The resolution of a grism is proportional to the tangent of the wedge angle of the prism in much the same way as the resolutions of gratings are proportional to the angle between the input and the normal to the grating. The dispersed wavefront sensing system (as part of the NIRCam instrument) on the James Webb Space Telescope uses grisms. The system allows coarse optical path length matching between the different mirror segments.
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Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
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