Atomic Spectra
When electric current passes through a gas, the gas gives off a characteristic color
- passing the light through a prism to spread out the colors, the light splits up into a pattern of discrete colored lines
- this lines are always the same for a given gas (and different from the patterns produced by other gases): called emission spectrum
Spectral lines also appear when white light passes through a cool gas
- dark lines in the continuous rainbow spectrum
- the particular wavelengths are absorbed: absorption spectra
lines in the absorption and emission spectra coincide (more lines in the
Origin of the characteristic spectra unexplained !!!