An electron in a mercury atom jumps from level aa to level gg by absorbing a single photon. How do you determine the energy of the photon in joules?
1 Answer
May 22, 2017
Relativistic effects are present here... but I assume that the transition from level
- has
DeltaL = pm 1 (the total change in angular momentum is exactly1 ). - has
DeltaS = 0 (no changing between spin-paired and spin-parallel). - is not influenced by relativistic effects (e.g. those that make one transition more favorable than another in cases of close-lying atomic orbitals, particularly big
f orbitals).
If that is the case, then since we only care about the photon...
DeltaE = hnu
...as long as you know the frequency of whatever light you chose in
I will not use the Rydberg equation, as it only works on hydrogen atom. Clearly, mercury has more than one electron, so it has nondegenerate orbitals of the same