Question

Explain how Niels Bohr’s observation of hydrogen’s flame test and line spectrum led to his model of the atoms containing electron orbits around the nucleus?

Answer 1

In his observation, he notices that the hydrogen atom only emitted light of a fixed wavelength. He was able to discover that the electrons only orbit the nucleus of the atom at discrete orbits. When the electron ‘jumps’ from a higher to lower level orbit, it emits a wavelength. These wavelengths are unique to atoms of an element and can be used to identify them hence he led the way to the establishment of the light spectrum.