QUEST hydrogen atoms

The quest for unity is a staple of physics. In the chapters that follow, we shall see that the simple hydrogen atom has been a vital presence in that quest. 

Over the decades of the twentieth century, experimental physicists worked diligently to measure the Rydberg constant with ever greater precision. It has been the hydrogen atom that has provided the principal means for this quest. More specifically, it has been primarily the first and most prominent spectral line in the Balmer series, the bright red line, that has been the focus of interest. For this reason among others, the IT line has been studied more intensively than any other line in experimental spectroscopy. ... 

The quest for methods of synthesizing chiral fluoroorganic compounds is one of the most fascinating topics in modern organofluorine chemistry because the replacement of hydrogen with a fluorine atom often results in a significant improvement in the physicochemical properties and biological activities of the molecules. 

The discovery that waves could have matterlike properties and that matter could have wavelike properties was revolutionary. Although scientists had long believed that energy and matter were distinct entities, the distinction between them, at least at the atomic level, was no longer clear. Bohr s theory was tremendously successful in explaining the line spectram of hydrogen, but it failed to explain the spectra of atoms with more than one electron. The electron appeared to behave as a particle in some circumstances and as a wave in others. Neither description could completely explain the behavior of electrons in atoms. This left scientists frustrated in their quest to understand exactly where the electrons in an atom are. 

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