patrick wrote:
For the Stern Gerlach experiment with mercury atoms two lines are got on the
screen.
Silver.
What was expected was many more lines due to quantisation of the angular
momentum of the atom.(AFAIK).
So electron spin/intrinsic ang momentum was then 'discovered' to explain
the two lines.But this assumes the orbital angular momentum is
zero.otherwise the spin + orbital would result in more than two lines.
Is this reasonable? It seems a bit too convenient to assume zero orbital
angular momentum.How is it known that the the orbital angular momentum is
zero?
Only the outermost s-electron is unpaired. All the other shells are
closed. Hyperfine splitting in the s-split was way too small to
detect.
--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" The Net!
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