I apologize if this question is stupid, but have been puzzled by it for a few days. Say I have a spectrometer measuring in the visible light range and we're looking to measure the absorbance on a solid material. In lab examples I've seen and read, the light source is placed on one end of the sample and the spectrometer on the other end. so the light passing through goes into the spectrometer. But what if you have a sample around 3 feet away from you. Could you place the light source next to the spectrometer and focus it on the sample then use a collimating lens in an attempt to see what was absorbed or not?
Once again, I apologize if this is a stupid question, I feel like I am missing some fundamental points of this process here.