Experiment 4 Determination of the first excitation potential for mercury atom in Franck-Hertz experiment.

Mohd Faiz Mohd Zin PHYS 341,West Virginia University mmohdzin@mix.wvu.edu Abstract
We have measured the excitation potentials of a mercury atom by performing Franck-Hertz experiment. The value measured in this experiment were 4.9110.087 V which is very close with the accepted value of 4.9 V and within error. We also observed the linearly increasing of acceleration voltage versus order of maxima and minima. The mean free path of an electron in mercury vapor gas was measured to be 13.597 m. The contact potential in this was found to be 2.8790.097 V and the wavelength was also found at 251.6844.373 nm which is in the ultraviolet spectrum.

II. Theory I. Introduction

In 1913, Niels Bohr proposed his model of atom that explains the emission spectrum of hydrogen by quantization of energy levels of the electrons.[1] In his model, electrons require a discrete amount of energy to move up the orbitals while release a discrete amount of energy to move down of the orbitals. So, both Franck and Hertz conducted an experiment in 1914 which by observing maxima and minima in transmission of electrons through mercury vapor that succeeds to verifies that the atomic electron energy states are quantized.[5] Franck and Hertz verify that the atoms can only absorb a discrete amount of energy regardless how the energy was transferred to the atom. In this experiment, we will set-up the Franck-Hertz tube with drops of mercury along the electrical connection and study the inelastic collision between electrons and the mercury atom that can results in quantized excitation of the atom. We will measure the anode current, Ic by varying the acceleration voltage Va and determine the first excitation potential by observing its maxima and minima. [5] A. Franck-Hertz Tube

FIG.1: Schematic of the simplified Franck-Hertz circuit. Franck-Hertz tube is a triode with a cathode (K), a grid and an anode (A).[4] The grid and the cathod are separated in a large distance so that the shorter mean free path of the electrons will have high probability for collision between the electrons and the mercury gas molecules. Short distance between the grid and the anode is to decrease the collisions beyond the grid. There is an acceleration voltage Va across cathode and the grid and a deceleration voltage Vd across andode and grid where Vd: 1.5 V. So, electrons that arrive at the grid need to have an energy greater than eVd to reach the anode A. [4]

B. Kinetic gas theory and mean free path According to ideal gas law, the state of an amount of gas can be determined by equation: p=nk B T (1)

where n is the number of atoms density and k B is the Boltzmann constant. A drop of mercury in the Franck-Hertz tube will partially evaporates with increasing temperature. So, a two-phase of liquid and gas formed and can be shown by the Clausius-Clapeyron equation: [6]

the electrons will pass through the grid and reach the anode to be measured as current. If the accelerated electrons contain energy equals to 4.9 eVa, the electrons will have enough energy to collide inelastically with the mercury atoms as they reach toward the grid. For this type of collision, the mercury atoms will absorb completely 4.9 eV energy of the electrons. Thus, they have insufficient energy to overcome the deceleration voltage Vd across the grid to the anode and so they fall back to the grid. At this point the anode current Ic will register a minimum amount of current.

dp = dT (Vv Vl )T

(2)

III. Experimental Design

The apparatus is set-up and fundamentally similar as in FIG 1. The filament is heated at midrange which is about 5.5 V and the Amplifier Gain is in maximum while Amplifier Zero is in the midrange. An acceleration voltage Va is applied between cathode and the grid while deceleration voltage Vd is applied between grid and the anode A.[4] The Franck-Hertz tube contains drop of mercury and so it is heated to vaporized the mercury. We o carefully set the temperature T at 170 C as it is a suitable temperature for excitation as it gives the mean free path of electrons in the right distance which must be very small compared with the distance between cathode and the anode which in our tube have a distance of 8mm.[4] This distance is large compared with the mean free path of the electrons at this temperature for mercury gas.[3] In this experiment, we were expected to see multiples of excitation energy for mercury atoms which is the result of inelastic collisions that occur between electrons and atoms at certain energy that excites mercury energy level from ground state to the first state. We also measured the anode current Ic by varying the acceleration voltage Va by using picoammeter and control unit respectively. At every peaks, we try to measure the anode current Ic at the surrounding acceleration voltage Va to increase the accuracy in determine the peaks.

where p is the pressure, T is temperature in K, is the vaporisation energy and Vv and Vt is the volumina of the vapor and liquid phase respectively. By means of integration and inserting number into the equation (2):

lg p=10.55

3333 0, 86 lg T T

(3)

p is pressure in Torr ( 1 Torr = 133.33 Pa). In this experiment, we will use high temperature which o is above 170 C to ensure a short distance for mean free path of electrons. l Mean free path, of an electron moves from the cathode K to the anode A is given by [5]

= l

1 2 n Ro2

(4)

Where Ro is the radius of a mercury atom which is 10 equal to 1.510 m Further development of this equation will yield:

= l

k BT

2 p R 2 o

(5)

C. Inelastic Electron Scattering The first excited state of mercury is 4.9 eV above the ground state. This means that the mercury atoms can absorb 4.9 eV energy if the accelerated electrons contain this much of energy. However, when the accelerated electrons have less energy than 4.9 eV which means Va is less than 4.9 V, the collisions form between the electrons and the molecules are elastic and since electron mass is very small compared with the mass of a mercury atom,

IV. Result and analysis

A. Analysis of the Franck-Hertz curve About 75 data points were taken to obtain FIG 2 and they were curve-fit by using summation of Lorentzian function for each of the peaks. The Franck-Hertz curve shown in FIG 1 formed the expected sequence of maxima and minima. We know that the deceleration voltage Vd is 1.5 V and so a current should be

( E 4

mc ) mHg

electrons doesn't lose any energy to the gas in that collision but only change in its direction.[1] Therefore the electrons will arrive at the grid with kinetic energy equal to eVa. The presence of deceleration potential Vd across the grid to the anode will oppose electrons that have energy lesser than eVd. So if Va is larger than Vd

observable if Va is exceeding 1.5V. Our data shows that the currents start to increase slightly at 1.663 V. As we can see from FIG 2, the current continue to increase due to the sufficient energy of the electrons to overcome the deceleration voltage. However, the current starts to drops dramatically at the first peak which is at 7.79 V. The sudden drops of the anode current Ic indicates that the electrons have gain enough kinetic energy to collide inelastically with the mercury atoms just as they reach the grid. The mercury atoms will gain energy while electrons lose its energy and fall out before reaching the anode and therefore the anode current Ic decreasing sharply until becomes a minimum. However, at certain point, the current starts to increase again. So this means that the collision between electrons and mercury atoms become elastic again. From FIG 2, the amplitude of a single maximum increases with higher acceleration voltage Va. This is due to a multiple inelastic collisions occured between the accelerated electrons and the mercury atoms. So whenever Va is multiple of V a , the currents will start to drop again. Therefore higher acceleration voltage Va will gives more electrons sufficient energy to overcome deceleration voltage Vd unless the electrons gain enough kinetic energy to collide ineleastically with the mercury atoms. Due to the statistical fluctuations and the kinetic energy distribution of the electrons, the anode current in the minima remains larger than zero.

of the fit for five peaks. Most of the data were fitted well except for several outliers at the minima. B. Excitation potential energy Method of least-square fit was performed between acceleration voltage Va and the number of peaks as shown in FIG 3. We obtained a good linearity of our data points and the slope of this graph is the average differences of acceleration potential between two peaks. The equation of the graph is:

y=(4.9110.087)x +2.5790.289 The slope of this graph is (4.9110.087)V and so V a=(4.9110.087)V where V a is
the acceleration voltage difference between adjacent maxima. The error obtained is random error in which results from statistical calculations. Therefore, by linear regression to the series of maxima, we have measured first excitation potential for mercury atoms which is 4.9110.087V . We have measured a good value in comparison with theoretical value which is 4.9 V and is inside the error boundaries.

FIG 3: Acceleration voltage Va increasing linearly with number of peak. Method least-square fit was used and standard error obtained is 3.474 V. Next we try to observe the series of minima and perform linear regression with the number of order for minima as in FIG 4. Acceleration voltage is linearly proportional to the order of minima and with equation y=(5.2390.072) x+3.2870.072 . Just like the maxima, the slope of this graph is V a which is 5.2390.072V .The theoretical value for this is slightly deviate outside the error boundaries

FIG 2: Anode current Ic versus Acceleration voltage Va which has been fitted with Lorentzian. It is the sum

which might be estimated too optimistically when taking the measurement.

In this experiment we regulate the temperature at 443K. With equation (3) we can obtain the pressure the gas whch is 797.595 Pa and we can use both temperature T and pressure obtained in equation (5) to obtain 13.597m. So the mean free path for the electrons is very small compared with distance from the cathode to anode due to the high temperature set in this experiment. Therefore we know that the electrons will undergo a sufficient number of collisions before reaching the grid and it will lose energy faster before it can contains higher energy values for higher excitation state mercure to occur. With this mean free path we can assume that higher energy levels than the first excitation state can be neglected.

V. Data and error analysis

In FIG 1,we used Lorentzian function which is given as FIG 4: Acceleration voltage Va increasing linearly with order of minima. Method least-square fit was used and standard error obtained is 3.706 V. As we have measured the excitation energy of the mercury atom, we found the spectral frequency corresponding to this energy by equation

y= y 0+(2

A w' ). where 4xx c 2+w 2

E 4.911eV = h 4.1331015 eV 15 = 1.1880.02110 Hz f=

From frequency we can find wavelength:

c = =2.99108 1.1881015 f

= 251.6844.373 nm The wavelength is corresponds to a strong line in the ultraviolet emission spectrum of mercury. C. Contact potential difference Contact potential difference is the difference between the work functions of the two plates of cathode and anode. This is due to the change of the amount of energy in the electrons as it lose some energy when being emitted by the cathode and gaine some when absorbed into the plate. We can substrace the average peak to peak voltage which is V a=(4.9110.087)V from the acceleration voltage for the first peak which is 7.79V and the contact potential difference is 2.8790.097 V . D. Mean free path of electrons

A is area, w is width, xc is center and y0 is y-offset. From this function we obtain curve for each peak and adding up all together to curve-fit the Franck-Hertz curve. The range for our measured value for the first excitation potential energy of mercury atom is from 4.824V to 4.998V which includes theoretical value inside the error boundaries. However for series of minima we measured the range of 5.167V to 5.311V which doesn't include to theoretical value of 4.9V inside its error boundaries. Our guess is that the deviation is caused by our lack of data points surrounding our minima and the reason for our maxima is much better than minima is because we only collecting many data points surrounding the peak but neglecting the surrounding minima. As we have shown the linearly increasing between anode potential Va for both series of maxima and minima, we can assume that both maxima and minima have equal acceleration potential difference and thus able to obtain accurate measurement for first excitation potential by using either one of them. The wavelength emitted is in the range of 247.311nm to 256.057 nm which is located in the middle ultraviolet spectrum. This experiment could be improved by taking much more data points especially surrounding the maxima and minima and if we could determine whether the successive minima or maxima is equally spaced.

VI. Conclusion
We have found an agreement with the accepted value of the excitation potential of mercury atom. For series of maxima we have measured the potential to be 4.9110.087V and for series of minima is

5.2390.072V . From FIG 3 and FIG 4, we have shown that the acceleration voltage linearly increasing with the order for both maxima and minima. Then we can assume that the distance between successive maxima is equal with the distance between successive minima. Therefore the first excitation potential can be measured by observing the series of maxima and minima.
In this experiment, the regular spacings between maxima in the plot of anode current Ic against accelerating voltage Va from FIG 1 have verifiedthe quantization of atomic electron energy states of mercury atoms that demonstrate the transmission of energy by electron to atoms is in multple discrete.

251.6844.373 nm . So the spectrum of

mercury should include a line whose wavelength is at that measured value.

measuring

its

wavelength

which

is

7. References
[1] Taylor, Zafiratos & Dubson, Modern Physics, 2nd Edition, 2004: Section 5.06 & 5.10 [2] Melissinos A., Experiments in Modern Physics, Academic Press, May 1966.

[3] Franck-Hertz Experiment, Description folder. [4] Instruction Manual and Experiment Guide for the PASCO scientific Franck-Hertz Experiment. PASCO scientific. [5] Preston, Dietz., The Art of Experimental Physics, John Wiley & Sons, 1991. [6]Salzman, William R. (2001-08-21). "Clapeyron and ClausiusClapeyronEquations". Chemical Thermodynamics. University of Arizona. Archived from the original on 2007-07-07. Retrieved 2007-1011.

2.8790.097 V and observed that the electrons

lose some of energy when it leaves cathode and gain some of energy when it absorbs anode. The mean free path was measured to be 13.587 m which is very small value in relative with the distance between cathode and anode and we can neglect the higher excitation state for mercury atoms. Other than that, we have verify the emission spectrum of mercury to be in middle ultraviolet spectrum by

We also have measured the contact potential to be