In 1913 Bohr proposed his quantized shell model of the atom (see Bohr atomic model) to explain how electrons can have stable orbits around the nucleus. The motion of the electrons in the Rutherford model was unstable because, according to classical mechanics and electromagnetic theory, any charged particle moving on a curved path emits electromagnetic radiation; thus, the electrons would lose energy and spiral into the nucleus. To remedy the stability problem, Bohr modified the Rutherford model by requiring that the electrons move in orbits of fixed size and energy. The energy of an electron depends on the size of the orbit and is lower for smaller orbits. Radiation can occur only when the electron jumps from one orbit to another. The atom will be completely stable in the state with the smallest orbit, since there is no orbit of lower energy into which the electron can jump.
Bohr’s starting point was to realize that classical mechanics by itself could never explain the atom’s stability. A stable atom has a certain size so that any equation describing it must contain some fundamental constant or combination of constants with a dimension of length. The classical fundamental constants—namely, the charges and the masses of the electron and the nucleus—cannot be combined to make a length. Bohr noticed, however, that the quantum constant formulated by German physicist Max Planck has dimensions which, when combined with the mass and charge of the electron, produce a measure of length. Numerically, the measure is close to the known size of atoms. This encouraged Bohr to use Planck’s constant in searching for a theory of the atom.
Planck had introduced his constant in 1900 in a formula explaining the light radiation emitted from heated bodies. According to classical theory, comparable amounts of light energy should be produced at all frequencies. This is not only contrary to observation but also implies the absurd result that the total energy radiated by a heated body should be infinite. Planck postulated that energy can only be emitted or absorbed in discrete amounts, which he called quanta (Latin for “how much”). The energy quantum is related to the frequency of the light by a new fundamental constant, h. When a body is heated, its radiant energy in a particular frequency range is, according to classical theory, proportional to the temperature of the body. With Planck’s hypothesis, however, the radiation can be emitted only in quantum amounts of energy. If the radiant energy is less than the quantum of energy, the amount of light in that frequency range will be reduced. Planck’s formula correctly describes radiation from heated bodies. Planck’s constant has the dimensions of action, which may be expressed as units of energy multiplied by time, units of momentum multiplied by length, or units of angular momentum. For example, Planck’s constant can be written as h = 6.6 × 10−34 joule∙seconds.
In 1905 Einstein extended Planck’s hypothesis by proposing that the radiation itself can carry energy only in quanta. According to Einstein, the energy (E) of the quantum is related to the frequency (ν) of the light by Planck’s constant in the formula E = hν. Using Planck’s constant, Bohr obtained an accurate formula for the energy levels of the hydrogen atom. He postulated that the angular momentum of the electron is quantized—i.e., it can have only discrete values. He assumed that otherwise electrons obey the laws of classical mechanics by traveling around the nucleus in circular orbits. Because of the quantization, the electron orbits have fixed sizes and energies. The orbits are labeled by an integer, the quantum number n. In Bohr’s model, radius an of the orbit n is given by the formula an = h2n2ε0/π2, where ε0 is the electric constant. As Bohr had noticed, the radius of the n = 1 orbit is approximately the same size as an atom.
With his model, Bohr explained how electrons could jump from one orbit to another only by emitting or absorbing energy in fixed quanta. For example, if an electron jumps one orbit closer to the nucleus, it must emit energy equal to the difference of the energies of the two orbits. Conversely, when the electron jumps to a larger orbit, it must absorb a quantum of light equal in energy to the difference in orbits.
Bohr’s model accounts for the stability of atoms because the electron cannot lose more energy than it has in the smallest orbit, the one with n = 1. The model also explains the Balmer formula for the spectral lines of hydrogen. The light energy is the difference in energies between the two orbits in the Bohr formula. Using Einstein’s formula to deduce the frequency of the light, Bohr not only explained the form of the Balmer formula but also explained accurately the value of the constant of proportionality R.
The usefulness of Bohr’s theory extends beyond the hydrogen atom. Bohr himself noted that the formula also applies to the singly ionized helium atom, which, like hydrogen, has a single electron. The nucleus of the helium atom has twice the charge of the hydrogen nucleus, however. In Bohr’s formula the charge of the electron is raised to the fourth power. Two of those powers stem from the charge on the nucleus; the other two come from the charge on the electron itself. Bohr modified his formula for the hydrogen atom to fit the helium atom by doubling the charge on the nucleus. Moseley applied Bohr’s formula with an arbitrary atomic charge Z to explain the K- and L-series X-ray spectra of heavier atoms. German physicists James Franck and Gustav Hertz confirmed the existence of quantum states in atoms in experiments reported in 1914. They made atoms absorb energy by bombarding them with electrons. The atoms would only absorb discrete amounts of energy from the electron beam. When the energy of an electron was below the threshold for producing an excited state, the atom would not absorb any energy.
Bohr’s theory had major drawbacks, however. Except for the spectra of X-rays in the K and L series, it could not explain properties of atoms having more than one electron. The binding energy of the helium atom, which has two electrons, was not understood until the development of quantum mechanics. Several features of the spectrum were inexplicable even in the hydrogen atom. High-resolution spectroscopy shows that the individual spectral lines of hydrogen are divided into several closely spaced fine lines. In a magnetic field the lines split even farther apart. German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld modified Bohr’s theory by quantizing the shapes and orientations of orbits to introduce additional energy levels corresponding to the fine spectral lines.
The quantization of the orientation of the angular momentum vector was confirmed in an experiment in 1922 by other German physicists, Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach. Their experiment took advantage of the magnetism associated with angular momentum; an atom with angular momentum has a magnetic moment like a compass needle that is aligned along the same axis. The researchers passed a beam of silver atoms through a magnetic field, one that would deflect the atoms to one side or another according to the orientation of their magnetic moments. In their experiment Stern and Gerlach found only two deflections, not the continuous distribution of deflections that would have been seen if the magnetic moment had been oriented in any direction. Thus, it was determined that the magnetic moment and the angular momentum of an atom can have only two orientations. The discrete orientations of the orbits explain some of the magnetic field effects—namely, the so-called normal Zeeman effect, which is the splitting of a spectral line into three separate subsidiary lines. These lines correspond to quantum jumps in which the angular momentum along the magnetic field is increased by one unit, decreased by one unit, or left unchanged.
Spectra in magnetic fields displayed additional splittings that showed that the description of the electrons in atoms was still incomplete. In 1925 Samuel Abraham Goudsmit and George Eugene Uhlenbeck, two graduate students in physics at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, added a quantum number to account for the division of some spectral lines into more subsidiary lines than can be explained with the original quantum numbers. Goudsmit and Uhlenbeck postulated that an electron has an internal spinning motion and that the corresponding angular momentum is one-half of the orbital angular momentum quantum. Independently, Austrian-born physicist Wolfgang Pauli also suggested adding a two-valued quantum number for electrons, but for different reasons. He needed this additional quantum number to formulate his exclusion principle, which serves as the atomic basis of the periodic table and the chemical behaviour of the elements. According to the Pauli exclusion principle, one electron at most can occupy an orbit, taking into account all the quantum numbers. Pauli was led to this principle by the observation that an alkali metal atom in a magnetic field has a number of orbits in the shell equal to the number of electrons that must be added to make the next noble gas. These numbers are twice the number of orbits available if the angular momentum and its orientation are considered alone.
In spite of these modifications, by the early 1920s Bohr’s model seemed to be a dead end. It could not explain the number of fine spectral lines and many of the frequency shifts associated with the Zeeman effect. Most daunting, however, was its inability to explain the rich spectra of multielectron atoms. In fact, efforts to generalize the model to multielectron atoms had proved futile, and physicists despaired of ever understanding them.