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The Structure of The Atom: Chapter 4 in Rex and Thornton's "Modern Physics" Wed. October 26, 2016
The Structure of The Atom: Chapter 4 in Rex and Thornton's "Modern Physics" Wed. October 26, 2016
Atom
Chapter 4 in Rex and Thornton’s “Modern Physics”
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S
In this chapter...
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Competing Models
S If the Thomson model were correct, then the alpha particle could
hit one of the electrons and scatter.
S Since the gold foil consists of more than 1 electron, the effects of
these scatters would add together
S At the 2nd scatter, the alpha could go further away from the horizontal
axis or come back. One can show that <θ> = N * √θ_single
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Calculation
S Much to everyone’s shock and surprise, they found that, at times, the
alpha particles were scattering by as much as 90° or even by 180°!
S Someone remarked that it was as if you shot a cannon shell at a piece of
tissue paper, and that metallic shell bounced back!
S Idea was: the α particle encountered the electric field of the nucleus
S The closer it came, the larger the force, hence larger the scattering angle.
S With some simple assumptions, one can derive relationship for b & θ
S M_nucleus >> M_alpha, so nucleus recoil is neglected. Only the
S Thin target =>assume only nuclear scatter Coulomb
force is in
S Assume that the alpha and the nucleus are point(-like) particles play, also
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Newton
S Rest of the derivation deals with how to account for this -> essentially,
we measure the fraction of scattered particles at various angles
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The Classical Atomic Model
S Example 4.3 shows you how to use this formula. For the values
given, we get that the fraction of scatters at 45° is ~10^-7 per mm^2
S It is a very small fraction, but non-zero.
S However, moving electrons should give off EM waves => they will
continuously lose power
S And very quickly fall into the nucleus (~10^-9 s). Oops!
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The Bohr Model
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Section 4.4 of R&T
S With these assumptions, Bohr was able to predict the Rydberg formula
of line spectra
S See the relevant pages of lecture notes for Chapter 3
S En = -13.6 eV / n^2
S Implies that for n = 1, E = -13.6 eV -> electron is most tightly bound.
S As n increases, |En| decreases
S As it turns out, it takes ~13.6 eV to strip out the e- from a H atom!!
S For transitions between any two states n_upper and n_lower we get
h*f = 13.6 * (1/n_lower^2 – 1/n_upper^2)
S Or, because λ=c/f -> 1/λ=f/c =>1/λ = (13.6/hc) (1/nl^2 – 1/nu^2)
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Blast from the Past
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Bohr’s Correspondence Principle