Determine whether each transition in the hydrogen atom corresponds to absorption or emission of energy. a. n = 3¡n = 1 b. n = 2¡n = 4 c. n = 4¡n = 3

Video transcript

Hey, everyone. And welcome back, determine whether each transition in the hydrogen atom corresponds to absorption or emission of energy A from N equals three to N equals one, B from N equals two to N equals four C from N equals four to N equals three. And we're given four answer choices. ABC and D they are basically variations of emission and absorption. So let's solve this problem. And let's understand how to get that correct answer. What we're analyzing here is the electron in hydrogen. Let's remember that the ground state level is N equals one. And when we increase energy of that electron, we can actually promote it to higher energy levels. So energy increases. And if energy increases, we essentially can understand that we can have higher energy levels with an increase in energy, we can achieve higher energy levels and excite our electron from a lower level to a higher level. So we can essentially state that if we analyze those concepts emission and absorption of energy, it's not difficult to generalize what that means for the emission concept. We can simply state that we have a higher and value or the higher energy level going towards a lower level. And similarly, for the absorption, we will have the opposite, we will promote our electron from a lower level to a higher level, right? So let's look at what we have. So for part A from N equals three, two N equals one, we're essentially saying we are removing energy from that electron to move it to a lower energy state. So that means if we're going from higher to lower energy, we will have emission, right? We're going to say that A corresponds to emission four B, we are going from N equals two to N equals four. So we are exciting our electron to a higher energy level, meaning we have to absorb energy to be able to do that. And as a result, we have absorption finally, for part C, if we start with N equals four, we end up at N equals three, we're going from higher to lower, right? So from a higher energy level to a lower energy level. And that means we have to remove that energy from the electron. And as a result, the removal of that energy would be emission. OK. So we have emission absorption emission. We can notice that according to our answer, we end up with the correct answer. Choice B A is emission B is absorption and C is emission. Thank you for watching and I hope to see you in the next video.