http://www.anandtech.com/show/11022/scio-sensor-added-to-smartphone
I first saw Consumer Physics' SCiO handheld scanner a couple of years ago and was impressed by its ability to identify materials by scanning and analyzing their chemical composition. In the intervening years, Consumer Physics has partnered with Analog Devices to increase the sensor's accuracy and reduce its size, and at CES 2017, the company announced the first smartphone with an integrated SCiO sensor, making this technology even easier to carry and use.
[...] The SCiO sensor uses near-infrared spectroscopy to identify a material's molecular content. By illuminating an object with a broadband light source and using the spectrometer, a type of optical sensor, to break the reflected light into its constituent components, SCiO's signal processing algorithms compare the reflected light's wavelengths to the original emission to create a spectral fingerprint. This technique works because molecules will only absorb photons at certain energy levels, which means specific wavelengths will be missing or attenuated in the reflected light.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 13 2017, @02:08PM
Why did you add a lengthy four-sentence explanation as a footnote to your very terse one-sentence answer, especially when it naturally flows if you just appended it to the first sentence? Why the hell would anyone add a footnote to a one-sentence statement when you can just do your explaining by starting a new sentence?