Summary and Main Ideas

Summarizing Lessons on the Bohr Model

Bohr incorporated Planck’s and Einstein’s quantization ideas into a model of the hydrogen atom that resolved the paradox of atom stability and discrete spectra. The Bohr model of the hydrogen atom explains the connection between the quantization of photons and the quantized emission from atoms. Bohr described the hydrogen atom in terms of an electron moving in a circular orbit about a nucleus. He postulated that the electron was restricted to certain orbits characterized by discrete energies. Transitions between these allowed orbits result in the absorption or emission of photons. When an electron moves from a higher-energy orbit to a more stable one, energy is emitted in the form of a photon. To move an electron from a stable orbit to a more excited one, a photon of energy must be absorbed. Using the Bohr model, we can calculate the energy of an electron and the radius of its orbit in any one-electron system.

Key Equations

• $${E}_{n}=-\frac{k{Z}^{2}}{{n}^{2}}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}},\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}n=1,\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}2,\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}3,\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}\dots$$
• $$\text{Δ}E=k{Z}^{2}\left(\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}\frac{1}{{n}_{1}^{2}}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}-\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}\frac{1}{{n}_{2}^{2}}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}\right)$$
• $$r=\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}\frac{{n}^{2}}{Z}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}{a}_{0}$$

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