Line Emission Spectra Lab Report

The goal of this experiment was to measure spectroscope position to calculate wavelengths of line emission spectra while also using this data to determine the unknown mixture of the flame emission procedure of the experiment. The original hypothesis was that the spectroscope would show multiple different line emission spectra in which the ΔE would be negative there was an emission of light as the electron's decreased in electron transitions. This hypothesis was proven correct, as well as, the unknown mixture is predicted to contain iron III, copper II and potassium.

With the acquired spectroscope, the position of 5 different line emission spectra on the spectroscope were taken and recorded into Table 1. The values were then compared to reference
With increasingly smaller wavelengths comes increasing larger frequencies because they are inversely proportional to each other. The frequencies of each color of line emission spectra of hydrogen gas lies within 4.41 x 1014 to 6.66 x 1014 Hz, showing the relative closeness of each line on the spectrum. From these frequencies, the energy of a photon was calculated to find values between 2.92 x 10-19 and 4.41 x 10-19 joules. The line emission spectra of hydrogen gas is a part of the Balmer series in which the energy falls from a higher energy down to n = 2. The energy found was used to find from which n level the energy fell from for each color. The highest energy level was n =5 and the lowest was n = 3. The colors with the highest frequencies and lowest wavelengths had the largest emission of energy to fall through the most energy levels. Similarly, the largest wavelengths and the smallest frequencies from colors had the smallest emission of energy and the smallest fall in energy level. The falling of energy levels is indicative and a negative value for ΔE, which supports the
In Table 5, the color of flames for 5 different metal ions was recorded and their correspond line emission spectra were determined. On the color spectrum, the wavelengths increase from violet to red (the first and last colors on the spectrum). The dominating color of the flames for the metal ions was orange. Each flame contained orange, and 3 flames contained only orange (Ion III, sodium, and potassium) in the flame. Across the metal ions, the line emission spectra varied for each color very little. For instance, orange line emission spectra for each metal ion varied between 6.0 and 6.1 mm on the spectroscope. These observations were used in the determination of which metal ions were found in the unknown mixture. In Table 6, the color of the flame was yellow with an orange core, which was unseen by any of the metal ions. It is predicted that the unknown mixture contains iron III, copper II, and potassium. Iron III is predicted to be apart of this mixture because orange is next to yellow on the color spectrum and it had the least intense orange flame. Similarly, potassium also had an orange that was not very intense. Copper II, however, had a green flame. When analyzing color, green is a product of yellow and another color mixture. Therefore, because of this relationship between color, copper II is also predicted to be in the mixture. Also, Iron was the only metal