How Costly was Raman’s Equipment for the Discovery of Raman Effect?"

In 1928 C V Raman and his students found out that when monochromatic light is scattered by a transparent media, the scattered light contains not only the original colour, but also other colours; which give information about the molecular structure of the scattering substance.For this work on light scattering, known as Raman effect, Raman, the first Asian, received the Physics Nobel Prize in 1930.That the discovery worth a Nobel Prize costs only a few hundred rupees is seen with awe and in circulation for quite some time in the country.An analysis of the price of total number of instruments (including associated components) required by Raman for this discovery has been made and presented in this paper.It shows that the actual cost of the instrument is far more than that is commonly believed.