Hello everyone, today we're going to be going over what a spectrophotometer is and the basics, like how to calibrate and use it. Let's get started. This is the standard Genesis 20 spectrophotometer that you will encounter in your lab. It consists of three main parts. The display, which gives you the readout of the absorbance and the wavelength at which you're measuring. Here's the interface, which you'll be using to adjust the wavelength and blank the machine. And finally, the area in which you put the samples. These are the standard quvets that you will see when working with a spectrophotometer. Generally, you will only receive one or two. Quvets are designed especially for the spectrophotometer. As you can see, they have a transparent side and an opaque side. You must only hold the quvette on the opaque side. Like so. If you hold it on the transparent side, you'll get oil and fingerprints, and thus you will have an inaccurate reading. Make sure you hold it on the ridge side. There may come a time when you need to adjust the wavelength on the machine. As you can see here, the machine is currently set to read at 465 nanometers. To adjust this, simply click the NM up or the NM down button. As you see here, I adjust it to 475. Whenever you begin using the machine or after you've adjusted the wavelength, you must blank it. Simply take a quvette with the ionized water, or whichever your blank must be. Take a Kim wipe and gently wipe the transparent sides of the quvette. Be careful not to scratch the sides of the quvette as that will produce inaccurate readings. Next open the hood and firmly and carefully insert the quvette, making sure not to spell any drops into the machine and close the door. If you look closely, you will see an arrow alongside where you put in the quvette. That is the way that the light passes, therefore your transparent edges must be facing the same way. Put the quvette in and again make sure that the light passes through the transparent edges alongside with the arrow. Now you're ready to blank the instrument. Simply hit the zero abs button as you see there and it will set the blank. Once the instrument read out is set to zero, you know that you're ready to go. Without adjusting any settings, simply take out your blank, holding the opaque side of course, and insert your quvette with the solution of which you'd like to take the absorbance. Make sure that you take a Kim wipe and wipe the transparent sides of the quvette to make sure that there are no smudges or drops of solution on the side. And again place it in the machine, facing the correct way, and close the door. Once you've inserted the quvette with your sample, simply close the door. Do not adjust any settings. All you need to do is wait for the reading to stabilize. The reading, as you can see, is right there. Here it finally stabilizes at 0.107. Remember absorbance does not have units. And there you have it, the basics of a spectre-photometer. Good luck and have fun!