WHY DOES HYDROGEN HAVE SO MANY SPECTRAL LINES
2007-02-04 05:43:28 · 2 answers · asked by emmaderbs 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Chemistry
Even the hydrogen atom has a number of possible stable electron orbitals, and each of them have "hyperfine" structure, meaning that there's a 3 way variation on each orbit based on electron spin-orbit interaction. Let's say that we have just 5 lowest electron energy levels, the most commonly filled (there's theoretically no limit to how many it can have, but the higher ones are rarelly filld). Each of those 5 is split 3 ways, so we have a total of 15 energy levels. But wait! We're not done! When an electron "falls" between one to another, the energy emitted in the form of light is based on the difference of the square roots of the wave numbers of each of the orbitals. That means there's a total of 15 x 14 = 210 possible transitions with different energy differences. Now, do you see why there could be so many? That's just with the first 5 lowest energy levels.
2007-02-04 05:54:36 · answer #1 · answered by Scythian1950 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Please refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_spectrum
2007-02-04 13:54:04 · answer #2 · answered by ශාකුන්තල | shaakunthala 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋