ATOMIC EMISSION SPECTRA
Scientific instruments have opened up sensory domains far beyond the constraints of biological perception. Technology has extended our phenotype enormously and has pushed the boundaries of what can be known...
The image shows the emission line spectrum of helium viewed through an ordinary compact disk. Nine lines are visible, including the prominent yellow line at 587.6 nm.
The Physics Teacher: November 2002 Volume 40:8
LINK TO INTERACTIVE ABSORPTION AND EMISSION SPECTRA OF THE ELEMENTS
Virtual Lab of the Department of Physics at the University of Oregon
One puzzle that had been around for a long time was to do with spectrum readings of the wavelengths of hydrogen. These produced patterns showing that hydrogen atoms emitted certain wavelengths but not others… Bohr was struck by a solution and dashed off his famous paper. Called “On the Constitutions of Atoms and Molecules,” the paper explained how electrons could keep from falling into the nucleus by suggesting that they could occupy only certain well-defined orbits… an electron moving between orbits would disappear from one and reappear instantaneously in another without visiting the space between. This idea—the famous quantum leap is of course utterly strange, but it was too good not to be true… It was a dazzling insight and it won Bohr the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics, the year after Einstein received his.
Bryson, Bill (2005: 176-177) A Short History of Nearly Everything: Special Illustrated Edition. Broadway Books, New York.
