Energy & Green Tech

Probing where protons go to develop better fuel cells

Solid oxide fuel cells, or SOFC, are a type of electrochemical device that generates electricity using hydrogen as fuel, with the only 'waste' product being water. Naturally, as we strive to reduce our carbon output and mitigate ...

Energy & Green Tech

Hydrogen blending as a pathway toward US decarbonization

The U.S. natural gas infrastructure is expansive, providing service for 32% of the nation's energy consumption in 2021. To reduce the emissions from natural gas service, blending hydrogen into natural gas pipelines could ...

Energy & Green Tech

Researchers create green fuel with the flip of a light switch

Researchers at Princeton and Rice universities have combined iron, copper, and a simple LED light to demonstrate a low-cost technique that could be key to distributing hydrogen, a fuel that packs high amounts of energy with ...

Energy & Green Tech

A little strain goes a long way in reducing fuel cell performance

Many of us are all too familiar with how strain in work relationships can impact performance, but new research shows that materials in electricity-producing fuel cells may be sensitive to strain on an entirely different level.

Energy & Green Tech

Hydrogen production and carbon capture in a single step

Hydrogen production takes place using natural gas as the raw material, combined with a very special ceramic membrane. Both hydrogen production and CO2 capture are achieved in a single step, which makes the method highly energy ...

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Hydrogen atom

A hydrogen atom is an atom of the chemical element hydrogen. The electrically neutral atom contains a single positively-charged proton and a single negatively-charged electron bound to the nucleus by the Coulomb force. The most abundant isotope, hydrogen-1, protium, or light hydrogen, contains no neutrons; other isotopes contain one or more neutrons. This article primarily concerns hydrogen-1.

The hydrogen atom has special significance in quantum mechanics and quantum field theory as a simple two-body problem physical system which has yielded many simple analytical solutions in closed-form.

In 1914, Niels Bohr obtained the spectral frequencies of the hydrogen atom after making a number of simplifying assumptions. These assumptions, the cornerstones of the Bohr model, were not fully correct but did yield the correct energy answers. Bohr's results for the frequencies and underlying energy values were confirmed by the full quantum-mechanical analysis which uses the Schrödinger equation, as was shown in 1925/26. The solution to the Schrödinger equation for hydrogen is analytical. From this, the hydrogen energy levels and thus the frequencies of the hydrogen spectral lines can be calculated. The solution of the Schrödinger equation goes much further than the Bohr model however, because it also yields the shape of the electron's wave function ("orbital") for the various possible quantum-mechanical states, thus explaining the anisotropic character of atomic bonds.

The Schrödinger equation also applies to more complicated atoms and molecules. However, in most such cases the solution is not analytical and either computer calculations are necessary or simplifying assumptions must be made.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA