[Luke149]

Hi im stuck on another problem from a past paper. The question asks to calculater the energy of the first transition in the Lyman series by using an equation for the energy levles of the hydrogen atom in jouls and electron volts.




so far ive used the formula to calculate the energy for n=1 and n=2 and then calculated the difference between then which i think should give the energy of the first transition in joules per second which gave me 1.6349x10^-20 joules per second. To get it into eV per second i divided it by 1.602x10^-19 and got 0.102 eV. However according to http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/mod2.html#c3 the value i should get is 10.2eV and im stumped as to why im got getting that. Any help would be greatly appreciated

Luke

[Luke149]

Ah i think i worked out where i went wrong, the value for the Rydberg constant i was given in cm-1 and it should have been in m-1. I must learn to check these things