Physics 109 - The Hydrogen Spectrum

2 Weeks to complete - lab books to be handed in for feedback before final week's chance to correct problems

In this experiment you will be making precision measurements of the spectrum of visible light emitted by hydrogen atoms, which is one of the famous experiments leading to the invention of quantum mechanics. You'll make use of the diffraction grating that you calibrated in a previous experiment. 

You can view all of the material for the laboratory in Postscript or PDF formats.

Experiment #2 (.ps), (.pdf)

You are expected to do at least 5 wavelength measurements (some combination of the four measurable hydrogen lines plus the ability to do first and second order diffraction).

The series of wavelengths that you are measuring can be used to test the relationship between wavelength lambda and the quantum level n that the electron is falling from:  1/lambda is proportional to 1/n² . The goal of the experiment is to use your data to test this model..