I remember back in high school chemistry, I learned that each of the atomic elements on the chart, like Hydrogen, Calcium, Carbon, etc… each has a molecular frequency. Like how we can tune a radio because of a quartz crystal.
I also know that the FCC has a chart that shows us where the transmission bands are placed, from band 4 to band 9…
So I’m curious… and I can’t find this information anywhere:
How would I go about figuring out where each of the atomic elements is located on the spectrum, when measured by Hz? I’m curious what element is located in what band and on what specific frequency.
Just the conversion formula would be great, from atomic molecular weight to Hz… but I’m hoping the world’s smartest human has more specific information!
I think you’re misremembering your high school chemistry. The closest I can get to an interpretation is you’re thinking of emission lines: Fraunhofer lines - Wikipedia
Your recollection of high school chemistry is, I’m afraid, a little garbled. There’s not just one frequency associated with each element, and the frequencies change depending on things like whether electrons have been removed from the atom or the atom is in a molecule.
An atom, sitting on its own, has a certain number of states its electrons can be in. Each one of these states has a different amount of energy associated with it. If the electrons rearrange themselves from a higher-energy state to a lower-energy state, then the extra energy is emitted as a particle of light called a photon. The frequency of the photon is directly related to how much energy it has, so that means that a lone atom can only emit light of certain frequencies. This is probably what you remember from high school chemistry. However, every atom has a very large number of possible frequencies it can emit, not just one. In practice, only a few of these are ever very bright. These frequencies form the atomic spectrum for the element. Usually these frequencies correspond to visible light, ultraviolet light, or occasionally X-rays. (Radio waves and light waves are fundamentally the same thing; it’s just that light wave have much much higher frequencies than radio waves.)
If you take that atom now and attach it to other atoms to form a molecule, things change around somewhat. First, the energy levels of the electrons change; so an H[sub]2[/sub] molecule has a different spectrum than an individual hydrogen atom has. Second, you can now have energy due to the motion of the nuclei — not unlike two masses attached by a spring that pulls them back together if they get too far and pushes them back together if they get too close. Like with the electrons, there are only certain amounts of energy these oscillations can have; if the molecular vibrations change, they’ll emit photons as well. These photons are usually much lower in energy, in the infrared region of the spectrum. But still not in the radio range, which is what the FCC cares about.
lots of atomic and molecular happenings have some relation to a frequency involved. there are many and some can occur in very special circumstances in a laboratory.
some atoms give off or absorb light is one of many relations to a frequency.
I’m not much help but I’m pretty sure I remember something from physical chemistry related to this.
I think there is some inherent vibration in moving objects that becomes exceedingly important when you get down to very small subatomic particles. I only remember this because a homework problem had us determining the frequency (or was it wavelength?) of a softball. It was imperceptively small, but used the same mathematics that became greatly important on the small scale.
We need a well schooled P-chemist to sort this out.
In addition to the corrections other posters have pointed out, the frequency of a quartz crystal controlled oscillator is determined by the size of the crystal, not the molecular weight of the quartz making up the crystal. The crystal resonates as a physical object, somewhat similar to how a tuning fork rings at a note determined by how large it is, although the quartz crystal is generating an electrical signal through piezoelectric effects rather than a sound.