Chapter 2. The Quantum Mechanical Model of the Atom
- Page ID
- 106721
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- 2.1: Electromagnetic Wave
- Light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation move through a vacuum with a constant speed, c. This radiation shows wavelike behavior, which can be characterized by a frequency, ν, and a wavelength, λ, such that c = λν. Light is an example of a travelling wave. Other important wave phenomena include standing waves, periodic oscillations, and vibrations. Standing waves exhibit quantization, since their wavelengths are limited to discrete integer multiples of some characteristic lengths.
- 2.2: The Bohr Model
- Bohr incorporated Planck’s and Einstein’s quantization ideas into a model of the hydrogen atom that resolved the paradox of atom stability and discrete spectra. The Bohr model of the hydrogen atom explains the connection between the quantization of photons and the quantized emission from atoms. Bohr described the hydrogen atom in terms of an electron moving in a circular orbit about a nucleus. He postulated that the electron was restricted to certain orbits characterized by discrete energies.
- 2.3: Development of Quantum Theory
- Macroscopic objects act as particles. Microscopic objects (such as electrons) have properties of both a particle and a wave. but their exact trajectories cannot be determined. The quantum mechanical model of atoms describes the 3D position of the electron in a probabilistic manner according to a mathematical function called a wavefunction, often denoted as ψ. The squared magnitude of the wavefunction describes the distribution of the probability of finding the electron in a particular region in