Spectroscopy is both qualitative and quantitative, so one can use spectral data tables of elements to do some fairly accurate Light Engineering.

Some nifty emulation of the spectral distributions of many non-LED popular lamps, which allows for direct utility calculations based on many different parameters including chromaticity, space type, lifetime, occasion, application, cost and efficiency. 7 such parameters are used with constrained weight optimization to fish out some of the more popular lamp types used in many situations today.

References (inline) the following docs:

The Science of Color, the Emission Spectra of the Elements and Some Lamp Engineering Applications

and

The Double Amici Prism Hand-held Spectroscope

First link main Theory, second link experimental verification.

Usage: Maple 18 main document code with library and data files. Download, unzip and run document for some quick results. Don't move library/data files relative to main doc. For further results and particular details, such as particular spectra & lamps, UN-comment the relevant commands in sections and execute individually after you have executed the entire sheet at least once.

Will be modified some time later to deal with LEDs. Based on elemental spectral data published by NIST. Suggestions 4 Improvements/Errors @ followup, here.

Elements.zip

For sample pics generated with the above code, click on the first reference link. All pictures therein were generated using this code.

--

Cheers,

Yiannis