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Atomic structure

The document discusses the historical development of atomic models, highlighting Thomson's 'plum-pudding' model and Rutherford's planetary model, which faced challenges in explaining atomic stability and emission spectra. It introduces Bohr's model, which incorporates quantized orbits and energy levels, successfully explaining the hydrogen spectrum and leading to the concept of energy transitions. Additionally, it touches on de Broglie's hypothesis of wave-particle duality, suggesting that stable orbits correspond to whole numbers of de Broglie waves.

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4 views

Atomic structure

The document discusses the historical development of atomic models, highlighting Thomson's 'plum-pudding' model and Rutherford's planetary model, which faced challenges in explaining atomic stability and emission spectra. It introduces Bohr's model, which incorporates quantized orbits and energy levels, successfully explaining the hydrogen spectrum and leading to the concept of energy transitions. Additionally, it touches on de Broglie's hypothesis of wave-particle duality, suggesting that stable orbits correspond to whole numbers of de Broglie waves.

Uploaded by

Analytical Fincon Pvt. Ltd.
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Atomic Structure

Early in the study of atomic structure, Sir Joseph Thomson and


Ernest Rutherford produced competing models of the atom.
Thomson proposed the “plum‐pudding” model. In this model, the
negative charges— electrons (the plums)—were surrounded by the
positive charges (the pudding), filling the volume of the atom.
To demonstrate his model, Rutherford bombarded thin metal foils with a beam
of positively charged particles. Most of the particles went through with little
effect, but occasionally one was deflected through a large angle. By way of
explanation, Rutherford proposed a planetary model of the atom with the
negatively charged electrons orbiting a central concentration of positive
charge—the nucleus.
Two main difficulties occur in the planetary model of the atom. First, any
object moving in a circle is accelerating. According to classical mechanics, an
accelerating charge radiates energy, producing electromagnetic waves;
therefore, the orbiting electron should radiate energy and fall quickly into the
nucleus. Because matter does exist, this obviously does not happen. Second,
an atom emits only certain electromagnetic radiation, not a continuum of all
frequencies.
Atomic spectra
When a gas is excited by a spark, light of a particular color is produced. For
example, neon gas produces a red‐orange color. When this light is spread
through a prism, a series of bright lines of specific wave lengths are observed,
called a line spectrum. The line spectra are characteristics of a certain gas,
rather like its atomic fingerprint. For example, the visible line spectrum of
hydrogen consists primarily of wavelengths of approximately 656 nm, 486 nm,
434 nm, and 410 nm. Although it was not understood at the time why it
worked, the following equation was found to describe the series of lines,
called the Balmer series:

where n is an integer of 3, 4, 5, … and R is a constant, now called


the Rydberg constant: R = 1.0973732 × 10 7 m −1.
In addition to emitting light of certain wavelengths, an element can also
absorb light of specific wavelengths. The light from a light bulb or the sun
forms a continuous spectrum—the colors of the rainbow. When a
continuous spectrum light is passed through a cool gas, the gas absorbs the
same wavelengths that it emits when excited, which appear as a set of black
lines in the continuous spectrum. The black lines are called the absorption
spectrum.
The Bohr atom

Niels Bohr (1852–1962) combined classical mechanics and some


revolutionary postulates to formulate a model of the hydrogen atom that
hoped to circumvent some of the difficulties of classical physics and still
explain atomic spectra. The following are his basic postulates.
 Postulate 1: The electron moves in only certain permitted circular orbits—quantized
states—around the positive nucleus under the influence of the Coulomb force.
 Postulate 2: The electron does not emit energy when it is in one of the allowed orbits
called a stationary state.
 Postulate 3: When the electron jumps from one permitted state to another, the energy
is given off as a particular photon with energy equal to the difference in the energies
of the initial and final states:

Planck's concepts of quantization can be seen in Bohr's postulates 1 and 3.


When the electron is in a stationary state, Bohr assumed that Newton's laws,
Coulomb's law, and conservation of energy were valid. Bohr showed that the
angular momentum of an electron with mass m traveling with speed v about a
circular orbit of radius r is quantized as

where n is an integer and h is Planck's constant.


Also, he derived an expression for the radius of hydrogen from the
electrostatic force (Coulomb's law) set equal to the centripetal force:

When n = 1, the radius is called the Bohr radius, which is the smallest orbit of
hydrogen.
To find an expression for the total energy of the electron orbiting the atom,
use the classical formula for total energy, then substitute r n from above
and v from the angular momentum to get the following:

When n = 1, the lowest energy state of the atom is called the ground state.
The value of the ground state of hydrogen is −13.6 electron volts, which is in
excellent agreement with the experimentally observed hydrogen ionization
energy—the energy necessary to remove an electron in the ground state
from an atom.
Combining this result with the equation in Bohr's postulate 2 yields

Because c = f λ, the equation becomes

From the preceding equation, the Rydberg constant may be calculated.

All of these constants are known, and the theoretical value for the Rydberg
constant is the same as this derived R. This demonstrated agreement is
remarkable, and it validated Bohr's postulates.
Energy levels

The Balmer series, found experimentally, can be explained by the Bohr model
of the atom in the following way. Figure 1 is a diagram of the energy
transitions possible for hydrogen.

Figure 1
Energy
transition
s of a
hydrogen
atom,
with the
spectral
series.

For the Balmer series, the hydrogen electron jumps from an initial excited
state ( n = 3,4,5, …) to a final state at the n = 2 level. In so doing, it emits a
photon with energy equal to the energy difference of the initial and final states.
Other series indicated on Figure illustrate the other series of lines found by
Theodore Lyman and Louis Paschen. This type of diagram is called
an energy level diagram because it illustrates the discrete, allowed energy
levels and the permissible transitions for the orbiting electron.
De Broglie waves and the hydrogen atom
The next task was to suggest why only certain discrete energy levels are
possible. De Broglie assumed that an orbit would be stable only if it contained
a whole number or multiples of a whole number of electron de Broglie waves.
Figure shows a representation of a standing circular wave of three wave
lengths.
Figure 2
Energy
transition
s of a
hydrogen
atom,
with the
spectral
series.

The depicted orbit would be the permissible orbit with the quantum number of
3, that is, n = 3. This visual way of understanding quantization shows that the
wave nature of matter is basic to a model of the atom. More complicated
formulations of quantum physics that were developed later have built on these
concepts.

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