Lyman series

The Lyman series

The version of the Rydberg formula that created the Lyman series was:

where n is a natural number bigger than or equal to 2 (i.e., ).

The lines in the picture are the wavelengths that correspond to n = 2 (on the right), then n = 3, which eventually goes to n → ∞ on the left. There can be an infinite number of spectral lines, but these lines are very dense when they get closer to n → ∞ (the Lyman limit).

The wavelengths in the Lyman series are all ultraviolet:
 n  Wavelength (nm)  2   121.56701Kramida, A., Ralchenko, Yu., Reader, J., and NIST ASD Team (2019). NIST Atomic Spectra Database (ver. 5.7.1), [Online]. Available: https://physics.nist.gov/asd [2020, April 11]. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18434/T4W30F  3  102.57220  4  97.253650  5  94.974287  6  93.780331  7  93.0748142  8  92.6225605  9  92.3150275 10  92.0963006 11  91.9351334 ∞Lyman limit  91.1753

Explanation

In 1914, when Niels Bohr made his Bohr model theory, he explained why hydrogen spectral lines fit Rydberg's formula. Bohr found that each electron's energy must be "quantized". This means that its energy level must be an integer: 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. The amount of energy for an electron based on its energy level follows this formula:

If an electron goes from a higher energy level (Ei) to a lower energy level (Ef), the atom emits radiation. The radiation has a wavelength of

In this equation, h is the Planck constant, and c is the speed of light. This equation can be simplified using units of electron-volts and angstroms:

Å.

 Related pages 
 Bohr model

References

Category:Spectroscopy
Category:Mechanics
Category:Electron