Question

When the excited electron of a H atom from n = 5 drops to the ground state, the maximum number of emission lines observed are ____.

Answer 1

Correct Answer: 4

To calculate the maximum number of emission lines observed when an electron in a hydrogen atom transitions from \( n=5 \) to the ground state (\( n=1 \)), we use the formula for the number of spectral lines: <lines> = \(\frac{n(n-1)}{2}\).

Since there is a single hydrogen atom, so only
5 → 4, 4 → 3, 3 → 2, 2 → 1 lines are obtained.