Exam 4: Atomic Physics and Spectra

Element A decays into element B with a half-life of 700 million years. An astronomer finds a rock that she knows was formed originally without any B present. But the rock now contains both A and B, with the A+B portion of the rock being 1/8 A and 7/8 B. How old is the rock?

The ratio of the intensities of two different wavelengths in the spectrum of a blackbody depends on the blackbody's

A scientist measures the temperature change between freezing water and boiling water with a thermometer calibrated in the Kelvin or absolute scale. How many degrees Kelvin (K) will he measure?

An astronomer has a sample of a rarified gas. What kind of spectrum can it produce?

A star looks predominantly yellow to an observer who is at rest with respect to the star. To an observer moving away from the star at 1% of the speed of light, the star will look predominantly

Electrons in atoms

The Balmer series of visible spectral emissions from hydrogen gas arises from transitions in which electrons jump between energy levels

Lin Carter, the science fiction writer, once wrote a story entitled The Green Star. Is it possible for a star to be green?

An astronomer observing the spectrum of the Sun on the solar equator finds that the Balmer H _$\beta$ spectral line ( $\lambda$ = 486 nm) is blueshifted by 0.0033 nm when measured at one edge of the Sun's disk compared with the same line at the center of the Sun's disk and is redshifted by the same amount on the equator at the other side of the Sun's disk. If this Doppler shift is due to the Sun rotating (try drawing a diagram), then the rotational speed of the Sun at its equator is

The carbon isotope ¹⁴C is not useful for most radioactive dating in astronomy because

The symbol $\lambda$ _max represents the

Which of these points is NOT a characteristic of a prism when used in a spectrograph?

The diameter of the nucleus of an atom, compared to the overall diameter of the atom, is

The Sun appears yellow to the eye for a variety of reasons. Which one of these is NOT one of these reasons?

The most intense lines in the Lyman and Balmer series emitted from the hydrogen atom are in what part of the electromagnetic spectrum?

The observed change in the wavelength of light due to the Doppler effect occurs

The specific sequence of spectral line series emitted by excited hydrogen atoms, in order of decreasing energy of the lowest energy transition, is

Wien's law, relating the peak wavelength $\lambda$ _max of light emitted by a dense object to its temperature T, can be represented by

The temperature of boiling water at ordinary air pressure on the absolute Kelvin temperature scale is

When an object is moving away from an observer, the visible light it emits is Doppler-shifted toward the