Lesson Plan: Emission and Absorption Spectra Physics
This lesson plan includes the objectives, prerequisites, and exclusions of the lesson teaching students how to determine the composition of a material from the features that appear in the spectrum of light coming from it.
Objectives
Students will be able to
- identify types of spectra by looking at diagrams of them: continuous spectrum, emission spectrum, and absorption spectrum,
- identify whether an emission or absorption line is present in two different spectra,
- identify elements in a mixture based on the spectrum of the mixture and the spectrum of the individual elements,
- see that lines in a spectrum have widths,
- determine the width of a spectral line by looking at a diagram of a spectrum.
Prerequisites
Students should already be familiar with
- the idea that light can be modeled as a wave,
- the idea that light can have a given wavelength and frequency,
- the idea that many objects emit light of a range of frequencies.
Exclusions
Students will not cover
- calculating where spectral lines are expected to appear based on models of the atom.