Using smartphone cameras and ambient light sensors in distance learning: The attenuation law as experimental determination of gamma correction

In times of the explosion of distance learning, because of emergency due to the pandemic, smartphone sensors and cameras are extremely valuable for teachers as they allow students to perform significant experimental activities in their own homes. The open-source software Tracker can be used in combination with the smartphone camera to perform measurements not only of mechanics activities, but also of optics. In the latter case, it is not always easy for students to understand how the pixel brightness which can be inferred from the taken photos are related to actual physical light intensity. In this paper we present a simple experiment to verify the exponential decay in the intensity of light going through successive sheets of a material (the Lambert law) with two different methods, i.e. using either the smartphone light sensor or the smartphone camera and Tracker. Besides its theoretical significance, the experiment constitutes a useful tool for calibrating the camera/Tracker combination to use it for different experiments.