Lab 7.1 Flame Tests and Emission Spectra

1. An element spectra is often called its fingerprint because every element has its own unique spectrum,when an electron return to ground state from the excited state, light is emitted at specific frequencies. Spectra lines are like an element's fingerprint. They are unique and can be used to identify the element.An atom in the excited state is unstable and will immediately emit the energy in the form of light as electrons return to the ground state. The excited state configuration of an atom has the same number of electrons as the ground state.
2. When an element is changing from ground state to an excited state, the electrons absorb energy and move to higher energy levels. Shortly after, the electrons return to a lower energy level and release energy. As this happens the Bright-line spectra is formed. This is based off of specific frequencies that the element's electrons had given off. 

Enrichment:
The origin of the element Helium involves Greek mythology. It is named after the God of the sun, Helios.
A red shift happens when increased wavelengths of light bounce off of objects, or shifted to the red side of the spectrum. A blue shift happens when decreased wavelengths of light bounce around and it becomes shifted towards the blue side of the spectrum. Because of the increasing wavelengths in red shifts, the distances of objects get much larger. Edwin Hubble proved that there are galaxies other than our own. He also discovered that the degree of the redshift observed in the light spectra from other galaxies increased in proportion to another galaxy's distance from earth. This helped establish the fact that the universe is expanding.