Chapter 8: Q6Q (page 344)
What is the energy of the photon emitted by the harmonic oscillator with stiffness and mass when it drops from energy level 5 to energy level 2?
Short Answer
The energy emitted by the photon is .
Chapter 8: Q6Q (page 344)
What is the energy of the photon emitted by the harmonic oscillator with stiffness and mass when it drops from energy level 5 to energy level 2?
The energy emitted by the photon is .
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Get started for freeThe photon energy for green light lies between the values for red and violet light. What is the approximate energy of the photons in green light? The intensity of sunlight above the Earth’s atmosphere is about 1400 W (J/s) per square meter. That is, when sunlight hits perpendicular to a square meter of area, about 1400 W of energy can be absorbed. Using the photon energy of green light, about how many photons per second strike an area of one square meter? (This is why the lumpiness of light was not noticed for so long.)
Energy graphs: (a) Figure 8.41 shows a graph of potential energy vs. interatomic distance for a particular molecule. What is the direction of the associated force at location A? At location B? At location C? Rank the magnitude of the force at locations A,B and C. (That is, which is greatest , which is smallest, and are any of these equal to each other?) For the energy level shown on the graph, draw a line whose height is the kinetic energy when the system is at location D.
(b) Figure 8.42 shows all of the quantized energies (bound states) for one of these molecules. The energy for each state is given on the graph, in electron volts ( ). How much energy is required to break a molecule apart, if it is initially in the ground state? (Note that the final state must be an unbound state; the unbound states are not quantized.)
(c) At high enough temperatures, in a collection of these molecules there will be at all times some molecules in each of these states, and light will be emitted. What are the energies in electron volts of the emitted light?
(d) The "inertial" mass of the molecule is the mass that appears in Newton's second law, and it determines how much acceleration will result from applying a given force. Compare the inertial mass of a molecule in the ground state and the inertial mass of a molecule in an excited state above the ground state. If there is a difference, briefly explain why and calculate the difference. If there isn't a difference, briefly explain why not.)
Make a rough estimate of this uniform energy spacing in electron volts (where ). You will need to make some rough estimates of atomic properties based on prior work. For comparison with the spacing of these vibrational energy states, note that the spacing between quantized energy levels for "electronic" states such as in atomic hydrogen is of the order of several electron volts.
(b) List several photon energies that would be emitted if a number of these vibrational energy levels were occupied due to collisional excitation. To what region of the spectrum (x-ray, visible, microwave, etc.) do these photons belong? (See Figure 8.1 at the beginning of the chapter.)
For a certain diatomic molecule, the lowest-energy photon observed in the vibrational spectrum is . What is the energy of a photon emitted in a transition from the th excited vibrational energy level to the nd excited vibrational energy level, assuming no change in the rotational energy?
Suppose that a collection of quantum harmonic oscillators occupies the lowest four energy levels, and the spacing between levels is . What is the complete emission spectrum for this system? That is, what photon energies will appear in the emissions? Include all energies, whether or not they fall in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum.
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