Hydrogen Emission Spectrography
Exploration of Excited Electrons

Looking through a diffraction grating shows us an atomic spectra. The diffraction grating is a series of slits that enable the light from the hydrogen gas to be broken up into its component colors. The components of this light are called an atomic spectra. In other words, we see a series of colors made by interactions in the gas.

Drag your mouse over the image above to see the changes.

For non Java Browsers: (Close up image)

If you have looked at the close up picture of the spectra, you would see scales. The top scale is energy, while the bottom scale is wavelength. Because we have included both scales we have assumed Plank’s hypothosis.

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Describe anything else you observe with the spectra

With the Hydrogen Spectra you see separate colors of light. These colors relate to energy changes of the Hydrogen atom.

Now that we’ve explored how the spectrum looks, we can see how the spectrum is related to energy changes of the atom.