Bohr model Totally Explained

Everything about Bohr Atom Model totally explained

In atomic physics, the Bohr model created by Niels Bohr depicts the atom as a small, positively charged nucleus surrounded by electrons that travel in circular orbits around the nucleus—similar in structure to the solar system, but with electrostatic forces providing attraction, rather than gravity. This was an improvement on the earlier cubic model (1902), the plum-pudding model (1904), the Saturnian model (1904), and the Rutherford model (1911). Since the Bohr model is a quantum physics-based modification of the Rutherford model, many sources combine the two, referring to the Rutherford-Bohr model.
Introduced by Niels Bohr in 1913, the model's key success lay in explaining the Rydberg formula for the spectral emission lines of atomic hydrogen; while the Rydberg formula had been known experimentally, it didn't gain a theoretical underpinning until the Bohr model was introduced. Not only did the Bohr model explain the reason for the structure of the Rydberg formula, but it provided a justification for its empirical results in terms of fundamental physical constants.
The Bohr model is a primitive model of the hydrogen atom. As a theory, it can be derived as a first-order approximation of the hydrogen atom using the broader and much more accurate quantum mechanics, and thus may be considered to be an obsolete scientific theory. However, because of its simplicity, and its correct results for selected systems (see below for application), the Bohr model is still commonly taught to introduce students to quantum mechanics, before moving on to the more accurate but more complex valence shell atom. A related model was originally proposed by Arthur Erich Haas in 1910, but was rejected. The quantum theory of the period between Planck's discovery of the quantum (1900) and the advent of a full-blown quantum mechanics (1925) is often referred to as the Old quantum theory.

History

In the early 20th century, experiments by Ernest Rutherford established that atoms consisted of a diffuse cloud of negatively charged electrons surrounding a small, dense, positively charged nucleus. Given this experimental data, it was quite natural for Rutherford to consider a planetary model for the atom, the Rutherford model of 1911, with electrons orbiting a sun-like nucleus. However, the planetary model for the atom has a difficulty. The laws of classical mechanics, specifically the Larmor formula, predict that the electron will release electromagnetic radiation as it orbits a nucleus. Because the electron would be losing energy, it would gradually spiral inwards and collapse into the nucleus. This is a disaster, because it predicts that all matter is unstable.
Also, as the electron spirals inward, the emission would gradually increase in frequency as the orbit got smaller and faster. This would produce a continuous smear, in frequency, of electromagnetic radiation. However, late 19th century experiments with electric discharges through various low-pressure gasses in evacuated glass tubes had shown that atoms will only emit light (that is, electromagnetic radiation) at certain discrete frequencies.
To overcome this difficulty, Niels Bohr proposed, in 1913, what is now called the Bohr model of the atom. He suggested that electrons could only have certain classical motions:

The electrons travel in circular orbits that have discrete (quantized) angular momenta, and therefore quantized energies. That is, not every circular orbit is possible but only certain specific ones, at certain specific distances from the nucleus and having specific energies.
The electrons don't continuously lose energy as they travel. They can only gain and lose energy by jumping from one allowed orbit to another, absorbing or emitting electromagnetic radiation with a frequency $u$ determined by the energy difference $Delta E = E_2 - E_1$ of the levels according to Bohr's formula ť :: $E_2 - E_1 =h
u,$

:where h is Planck's constant.
the frequency of the radiation emitted at an orbit with period T is as it would be in classical mechanics--- it's the reciprocal of the classical orbit period: ť :: $u = = hbar$ for the ground state orbital angular momentum. The angular momentum in the true ground state is known to be zero. Although mental pictures fail somewhat at these levels of scale, an electron in the lowest modern "orbital" with no orbital momentum, may be thought of as not to rotate "around" the nucleus at all, but merely to go tightly around it in an ellipse with zero area (this may be pictured as "back and forth", without striking or interacting with the nucleus). This is only reproduced in a more sophisticated semiclassical treatment like Sommerfeld's. Still, even the most sophisticated semiclassical model fails to explain the fact that the lowest energy state is spherically symmetric--- it doesn't point in any particular direction.
In modern quantum mechanics, the electron in hydrogen is a spherical cloud of probability which grows more dense near the nucleus. The rate-constant of probability-decay in hydrogen is equal to the inverse of the Bohr radius, but since Bohr worked with circular orbits, not zero area ellipses, the fact that these two numbers exactly agree, is considered a "coincidence." (Though many such coincidenal agreements are found between the semi-classical vs. full quantum mechanial treatment of the atom; these include identical energy levels in the hydrogen atom, and the derivation of a fine structure constant, which arises from the relativistic Bohr-Sommerfield model (see below), and which happens to be equal to an entirely different concept, in full modern quantum mechanics).
The Bohr model also has difficulty with, or else fails to explain:

Much of the spectra of larger atoms. At best, it can make predictions about the K-alpha and some L-alpha X-ray emission spectra for larger atoms, if two additional ad hoc assumptions are made (see Moseley's law above). Emission spectra for atoms with a single outer-shell electron (atoms in the lithium group) can also be approximately predicted. Also, if the empiric electron-nuclear screening factors for many atoms are known, many other spectral lines can be deduced from the information, in similar atoms of differing elements, via the Ritz-Rydberg combination principles (see Rydberg formula). All these techniques essentially make use of Bohr's Newtonian energy-potential picture of the atom.

The relative intensities of spectral lines; although in some simple cases, Bohr's formula or modifications of it, was able to provide reasonable estimates (for example, calculations by Kramers for the Stark effect).

The existence of fine structure and hyperfine structure in spectral lines, which are known to be due to a variety of relativistic and subtle effects, as well as complications from electron spin.

The Zeeman effect - changes in spectral lines due to external magnetic fields; these are also due to more complicated quantum principles interacting with electron spin and orbital magnetic fields.

Refinements

Several enhancements to the Bohr model were proposed; most notably the Sommerfeld model or Bohr-Sommerfeld model, which suggested that electrons travel in elliptical orbits around a nucleus instead of the Bohr model's circular orbits. This model supplemented the quantized angular momentum condition of the Bohr model with an additional radial quantization condition, the Sommerfeld-Wilson quantization condition ť

int_0^T p_r dq_r = n h
,

where p_r is the radial momentum canonically conjugate to the coordinate q which is the radial position and T is one full orbital period. The integral is the action of action-angle coordinates. This condition, suggested by the correspondence principle, is the only one possible, since the quantum numbers are adiabatic invariants.
   The Bohr-Sommerfeld model was fundamentally inconsistent and led to many paradoxes. The azimuthal quantum number measured the tilt of the orbital plane relative to the x-y plane, and it could only take a few discrete values. This contradicted the obvious fact that an atom could be turned this way and that relative to the coordinates without restriction. The Sommerfeld quantization can be performed in different canonical coordinates, and sometimes gives answers which are different. The incorporation of radiation corrections was difficult, because it required finding action-angle coordinates for a combined radiation/atom system, which is difficult when the radiation is allowed to escape. The whole theory didn't extend to non-integrable motions, which meant that many systems couldn't be treated even in principle. In the end, the model was replaced the modern quantum mechanical treatment of the hydrogen atom, which was first given by Wolfgang Pauli in 1925, using Heisenberg's matrix mechanics. The current picture of the hydrogen atom is based on the atomic orbitals of wave mechanics which Erwin Schrodinger developed in 1926.
   However, this isn't to say that the Bohr model was without its successes. Calculations based on the Bohr-Sommerfeld model were able to accurately explain a number of more complex atomic spectral effects. For example, up to first-order perturbations, the Bohr model and quantum mechanics make the same predictions for the spectral line splitting in the Stark effect. At higher-order perturbations, however, the Bohr model and quantum mechanics differ, and measurements of the Stark effect under high field strengths helped confirm the correctness of quantum mechanics over the Bohr model. The prevailing theory behind this difference lies in the shapes of the orbitals of the electrons, which vary according to the energy state of the electron.
   The Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization conditions lead to questions in modern mathematics. Consistent semiclassical quantization condition requires a certain type of structure on the phase space, which places topological limitations on the types of symplectic manifolds which can be quantized. In particular, the symplectic form should be the curvature form of a connection of a Hermitian line bundle, which is called a prequantization.

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