hydrogen spectrum question

[Prashan_punk]

why does spectrum of hydrogen have many lines though it has only one electron???

[npts2020]

Spectrum lines are a measure of photon absorption of a substance. Hydrogen effects more than one energy level of photons and thereby has more than one absoption line in the spectrogram.

[Severian]

The lines that you see are either emission lines or absorption lines - they are the at the wavelength of the photons which are absorbed or emitted from the atom. The boundary conditions on the (single) electron in the atom insist that the possible energies it can take are quantised, and the emission of a photon comes about by the electron falling down from one energy level to another. Since there are multiple energy levels (though only one electron to fit in these levels) you will see emission lines corresponding to all possible differences in the levels.

[DrP]

To add further.... look up the Balmer series, the Paschen series and the Lymen series. They give the spectral lines for emmisions of photons from electrons dropping to the n = 1 energy level for the Lymen, n=2 energy level for the Balmer and n = 3 for the Paschen (IIRC)

[John Cuthber]

A hydrogen filled gas discharge lamp has several species in it like H2 and H3+ as well as H and all of these have nmany excited states which can emit light. Once you have more than 1 atom you also have vibrational and rotational states that add to the number of possible lines.

BTW I rather doubt that you normally see absorbtion lines as Severian says.

[swansont]

You typically see absorption lines if you look at stars.

[Severian]

You can see them in sunlight too. The atmosphere absorbs very particular wavelengths leaving very distinct absorption lines in sunlight. They are known as Fraunhofer lines, and were seen long before they were explained.

[John Cuthber]

Last time I checked the sun was a star.

Anyway, most of these absorbtions don't have a lot to do with the hydrogen lines.