Spectra and the Bohr Atom

Abstract

We come now to a new aspect of atoms: the existence of discrete energy states. Niels Bohr’s idea that atoms can possess only certain well-defined amounts of energy was a major development in our understanding of atoms. In 1911 Bohr, a young Dane who had just received his Ph.D. in physics from the University in Copenhagen, came to England to visit for a year. He worked for a while in J J. Thomson’s laboratory in Cambridge, and then in early 1912 Bohr transferred to Manchester to work with Rutherford. Inspired by Rutherford’s concept of the atomic nucleus, Bohr subsequently developed a nuclear model of the hydrogen atom that predicted the wavelengths emitted in the spectrum of atomic hydrogen. The agreement of his predictions with observations was startlingly good.