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Re: hydrogen spectal series






On Wed, 20 Nov 1996, Michael Crofton wrote:

At the University, the reference librarians and I are having trouble finding the names
of the spectral series of atomic hydrogen for levels higher than six:

(lower level) (name)

1 Lyman
2 Balmer
3 Paschen
4 Brackett
5 Pfund
6 Humphreys

Do you know or have an idea of where to find out the names of the higher series? Do
you think these names even exist? I have found the year of "discovery" (first
observation) of the respective series for levels 1 through 5. Do you have a book >which lists the year Humphreys made his discovery?

I looked through the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics and several other reference
books on spectroscopy, but none listed higher levels, and only one listed Humphreys.



It's folks like you who drive reference librarians up the wall searching
for things of no possible use to anyone, which may not even exist. :-)

Where is it written that every spectral series must be named for someone,
like craters on the moon? Most series have no names, since there's a
standard notation for them. Only those series studied in the early history
of spectroscopy ever got names. But you do have the first six correct,
these being the ones listed in Condon and Odishaw's Handbook of Physics
(McGraw-Hill).

I'm very curious to know what circumstances arose which required this
information. But it's not considered polite for a reference librarian to
question your need to know.

-- Donald