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Sommerfield introduced elliptical
electron orbits into Bohr's model of the atom. |
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Bohr's success was somewhat
short lived as more careful experiments revealed extra spectral
lines which Bohr could not account for. Sommerfield saved
the day by proposing elliptical electron orbits to explain
these effects just as Kepler had done more than three centuries
earlier to explain deviations of the orbit of Mars around
the sun. Bohr's problems were not over though. A closer
look at earlier work by Zeeman (1897) showed that extra
spectral lines appeared when excited hydrogen atoms were
placed in a magnetic field. These could be accounted for
if the orientation of the orbit was also included in the
equations. |
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1902 - Pieter
Zeeman »
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1922 - Niels
Henrik David Bohr »
