Question

In your own words, being as specific as possible, describe what occurs inside an atom to create the emission spectrum for any given element

In your own words, being as specific as possible, describe how and explain why the emission spectra for Hydrogen and Nitrogen gas differ – beyond the obvious differences in color!

In your own words, being as specific as possible, describe how the combination of oxygen and hydrogen gases affects the hydrogen chemical fingerprint within the water vapor emission spectrum.

In your own words, being as specific as possible, describe how the energy utilized by these two elements must differ.

Answer 1

We know that atoms have discretised energy levels in which electrons revolve around the nucleus. An electron can only stay in an orbit if it possess a particular quantity of energy.

Thus, for any element, when the atoms of thatelement gains energy, say by heating, the electrons in their shells gain more energy (get excited) and jump to the higher orbits (which require a higher energy. Once in the excited state, these electrons cannot stay there for a long time and hence drop down to lower levels soon.

This transition, from a higher orbit to the lower orbits, brings with it the emission of the energy possessed by the electron (conservation of energy). This energy is emitted in the form of a photon, whose energy is determined by the difference in the two (orbit) energy levels.

Now, for each element, the orbital energies are different. Thus, the photon(s) emitted by a particular element will have a characteristic energy, depending on the transition undergone, and hence a characteristic frequency (and wavelength).

This energy is defined as :

where h = plank's constant, = frequency and = wavelength of emitted photon.

This is what gives rise to the emission spectrum (which is characteristic for an element).