Simple fluorescence imaging to identify the purity of olive oil: an activity in an optics course

Abstract

The current pandemic era demands distance learning, including physics experiments on the topic of optics. One of the optical phenomena that needs to be explained in optic courses is fluorescence. This study offers a simple home experiment regarding the application of fluorescence, namely to identify the purity of olive oil using simple fluorescence imaging. This fluorescence imaging experiment used a 532 nm green laser as a beam source and a smartphone camera as an image capture detector. Olive oil samples were mixed with mineral oil to obtain various variations of olive oil purity. When the sample was induced with a laser, the laser beam path changed colour to orange due to fluorescence phenomena. This fluorescence effect was then captured in the form of images. Fluorescence intensity converted from the Grey value of the laser beam path image. The experimental results show a linear relationship between fluorescence intensity and olive oil purity with a determination coefficient R 2 = 0.98. This experiment can be an offer to explain the application of fluorescence with activities carried out independently by tertiary-level physics students in their respective homes. This fluorescent imaging procedure can also be related in terms of its application in olive oil quality control.