What is light?
Read moreTable of Contents
Textbook Solutions for Physics for Scientists and Engineers: A Strategic Approach, Standard Edition (Chs 1-36)
Question
A chemist identifies compounds by identifying bright lines in their spectra. She does so by heating the compounds until they glow, sending the light through a diffraction grating, and measuring the positions of first-order spectral lines on a detector \(15.0\) \(cm\) behind the grating. Unfortunately, she has lost the card that gives the specifications of the grating. Fortunately, she has a known compound that she can use to calibrate the grating. She heats the known compound, which emits light at a wavelength of \(461 \text { nm }\), and observes a spectral line \(9.95 \text { cm }\) from the center of the diffraction pattern.
What are the wavelengths emitted by compounds A and B that have spectral lines detected at positions \(8.55 \text { cm }\) and \(12.15 \text { cm }\), respectively?
Solution
Step 1 of 4
Distance from the screen: \(L=15 \mathrm{~cm}=0.15 \mathrm{~m}\)
Wavelength of light from known source: \(\lambda_{1}=461 \times 10^{-9} \mathrm{~m}\)
Distance from the central maximum: \(y_{k}=9.95 \mathrm{~cm}=0.095 \mathrm{~m}\)
Formulas used:
\(\begin{array}{l} y_{m}=L \tan \theta \\ m \lambda=d \sin \theta \end{array}\)
full solution