1/24/2012 Spectral Analysis Experiment 1 Over the year, chemists have been working to find out more and

more on the composition and formation of the building block of life, the atom. Over the past 200 years, many advancements and discoveries have been made, contributing to many of the information that we now consider basic knowledge. In the past two centuries, large amounts of of data have been collected and used in order to prove the atomic theories derived by the early philosophical figures up to the modern chemist. Chemists whose findings have been affected by this newfound data are John Dalton, with Daltons model of the atom, Joseph John Thomson, with Thomsons model of the atom, Ernest Ernest Rutherford, with Rutherfords model of the atom, Niels Bohr, with the Charge Cloud Model, and finally, Erwin Schroedinger, with Schroedingers model of the atom. The current model of the atom is Schroedingers model, and the only way that we have gone from one model to another is with the research and advancements done and made by chemists who have been working, and still are, to make the most accurate atomic model possible. Another topic that scientists have been studying for centuries upon centuries are energy and light, and the explanation behind how energy is transferred from place to place. A certain way that scientists have identified as a way energy travels through space is by a process known as electromagnetic radiation, a process which can be seen in light fro the sun, X-rays, microwaves emitting from a microwave oven, radio waves, television waves, and heat waves emitting from a source of heat. All of the said examples exhibit wavelike behavior, as well as travel the exact same speed in a vacuum, m/s. Waves have three basic characteristics, wavelength, frequency, and speed. Wavelengths are commonly abbreviated as the Greek letter lamda, with the symbol . Wavelength is defined as the distance between consecutive peaks in a wave. Frequency is commonly abbreviated using the Greek letter nu, with the symbol Frequency is defined as how many waves pass a particular point per second. Speed is abbreviated with the letter v, and tells how fast a wave moves through space. Other parts of electromagnetic radiation include photons, which are streams of tiny packets of energy, however photons have been overtaken by quanta, which are small discrete packets of energy, as opposed to the continuous stream of energy in photons. Niels Bohr, a huge part of the making and improvement of the modern atomic theory discovered that in an atom there are a number of energy levels available, with the lowest being the ground state. As an electron passes through these energy levels, the state in which it is in varies. If an electron is in the aforementioned ground state, it is classified as an electron in the ground state. However, if that electron is rising through the levels or in any other level, it is said that the electron is in the excited state. A concept combining all previous is the spectrum, with varying forms including the line spectrum, the electromagnetic spectrum, and other lesser-known spectrums. A spectrum is the entire range of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, with varying results for different parts.