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Thursday, 19 August 2010 22:48 |
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In 1885 a Swiss secondary
school teacher named Johann Jacob Balmer published a short note (entitled “Note
on the Spectral Lines of Hydrogen”, Annalen der Physik und Chemie 25,
80-5) in which he described an empirical formula for the four most prominent
wavelengths of light emitted by hydrogen gas. These wavelengths had been
measured with great precision by Vogel and Huggins, giving the four values
6562.10, 4860.74, 4340.10, and 4101.20 Angstroms (10-10 m).
Balmer's note does not make clear whether he was also aware of the measured
series limit, l¥ = 3645.6 A, or whether he deduced this himself. In
any case, one can find by numerical experimentation that the four
characteristic wavelengths are closely proportional to the following products
of small primes
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