1. What Causes Each Line To Appear?
Lab: Spectral Analysis
Analysis
1. What causes each line to appear?
Each line is able to appear because an excited electron was unstable and had to fall back to a more stable energy level, creating energy in the form of light. However, to understand this, one must understand what causes an electron to be excited. So from the very beginning, a person named Max Plank proposed a theory that energy is emitted and absorbed in quantities called “quanta.” Einstein then came along and said that light contained quanta energy called “photons.” Electrons that are present in atoms are on different energy levels, with the lowest level that is closest to the nucleus being called the “ground state.” If an electron gains enough energy, it will jump to a higher energy level called the “excited state.” When an electron becomes excited, it becomes unstable and has to fall back to a more stable level. When they fall back, energy is created in the form of …show more content…
light. If the light that is created passes through a prism, then a light spectrum comes into view. The line spectrum is also called the atomic emission spectrum and is used to figure out which element is emitting the wavelengths by the number of lines that shows up in the spectrum. So essentially, what causes each line to appear are the wavelengths and the excited electrons falling to go to a more stable state.
2. Choose one sample that you feel confident about its identification and explain why/how you identified it. Provide a convincing argument.
A sample that I feel confident about its identification is sample #4.
I identified it as Hydrogen through the spectrometer and counting the number of lines that showed up inside it. I first looked at the sample and then counted the lines that showed up inside the spectrometer. The number I got for that was 3. The numbers that I got for each of the lines were 450, 500, and 680. Then I went to the back of the sheet that I was recording the data and compared my numbers. I immediately eliminated many possible elements because the elements had too many numbers; I only needed elements that had 3 numbers. As I went down the list of possible elements, I saw the element Hydrogen had very close numbers to the ones that I had written down (440, 490, 670 respectively) so I compared my numbers with the rest of the elements. None of the other elements came close to the similarity with Hydrogen so I concluded that Hydrogen was sample #4 because my numbers and the numbers of Hydrogen written on the back of the sheet were only each 10 nm
apart.
3. Research and discuss three uses of a spectroscope.
One use of the spectroscope is to detect chemical elements by their characteristic fingerprints from the light emitted into the spectroscope. Another use is to identify different gems in the field of gemology. And a final use of the spectroscope is to measure light in astronomy.
Conclusion
The elements for each unknown sample, from sample 1 to 4, are Mercury, Helium, Neon, and Hydrogen, respectively.
Analysis
1. What causes each line to appear?
Each line is able to appear because an excited electron was unstable and had to fall back to a more stable energy level, creating energy in the form of light. However, to understand this, one must understand what causes an electron to be excited. So from the very beginning, a person named Max Plank proposed a theory that energy is emitted and absorbed in quantities called “quanta.” Einstein then came along and said that light contained quanta energy called “photons.” Electrons that are present in atoms are on different energy levels, with the lowest level that is closest to the nucleus being called the “ground state.” If an electron gains enough energy, it will jump to a higher energy level called the “excited state.” When an electron becomes excited, it becomes unstable and has to fall back to a more stable level. When they fall back, energy is created in the form of …show more content…
light. If the light that is created passes through a prism, then a light spectrum comes into view. The line spectrum is also called the atomic emission spectrum and is used to figure out which element is emitting the wavelengths by the number of lines that shows up in the spectrum. So essentially, what causes each line to appear are the wavelengths and the excited electrons falling to go to a more stable state.
2. Choose one sample that you feel confident about its identification and explain why/how you identified it. Provide a convincing argument.
A sample that I feel confident about its identification is sample #4.
I identified it as Hydrogen through the spectrometer and counting the number of lines that showed up inside it. I first looked at the sample and then counted the lines that showed up inside the spectrometer. The number I got for that was 3. The numbers that I got for each of the lines were 450, 500, and 680. Then I went to the back of the sheet that I was recording the data and compared my numbers. I immediately eliminated many possible elements because the elements had too many numbers; I only needed elements that had 3 numbers. As I went down the list of possible elements, I saw the element Hydrogen had very close numbers to the ones that I had written down (440, 490, 670 respectively) so I compared my numbers with the rest of the elements. None of the other elements came close to the similarity with Hydrogen so I concluded that Hydrogen was sample #4 because my numbers and the numbers of Hydrogen written on the back of the sheet were only each 10 nm
apart.
3. Research and discuss three uses of a spectroscope.
One use of the spectroscope is to detect chemical elements by their characteristic fingerprints from the light emitted into the spectroscope. Another use is to identify different gems in the field of gemology. And a final use of the spectroscope is to measure light in astronomy.
Conclusion
The elements for each unknown sample, from sample 1 to 4, are Mercury, Helium, Neon, and Hydrogen, respectively.