Evidence for Spectral Lines
Can you tell me more about the experiments showing that different elements
made different spectral lines?
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Spectral lines were first seen in the sun's spectrum by William
Wollaston in
1802. However, they were not systematically studied until
1814, when a
German optician
named Joseph von Fraunhofer
observed and catalogued them.
Fraunhofer carefully recorded the positions of the lines, but he
didn't attempt
to explain why they were there. In the late 1850's, the
physicist Gustav
Kirchhoff decided to investigate further, with the help of the chemist
Robert Bunsen.
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Did he invent the Bunsen burner?
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Yes, and that's what Bunsen and Kirchhoff used to perform their
experiments. They held crystals of various substances in the flame
from a Bunsen burner; the crystals would then glow with
particular
colors, and, with a prism, the light from them could be separated
into spectra like the ones you saw.
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And they found that each element had its own unique set of
lines?
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They certainly did. A given element would always produce the same
spectrum, which was different from that of any other element. In
fact, in the 1860's, Kirchhoff and Bunsen discovered two new
elements,
cesium and
rubidium, when they came across some spectral lines that didn't
fit any of the known elements. Later, the elements of
gallium, helium, argon, neon, krypton, and xenon were also
discovered using
spectroscopy.
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