Electron shells

History

The existence of electron shells was first observed experimentally in Charles Barkla's and Henry Moseley's X-ray absorption studies. Moseley's work did not directly concern the study of electron shells, because he was trying to prove that the periodic table was not arranged by weight, but by the charge of the protons in the nucleus. However, because the number of electrons in an electrically neutral atom equals the number of protons, this work was extremely important to Niels Bohr who mentioned Moseley's work several times in his 1962 interview. Moseley was part of Rutherford's group, as was Niels Bohr. Moseley measured the frequencies of X-rays emitted by every element between calcium and zinc and found that the frequencies became greater as the elements got heavier. This led to the theory that electrons were emitting X-rays when they were shifted to lower shells. This led to the conclusion that the electrons were in Kossel's shells with a definite limit per shell, labeling them with the letters K, L, M, N, O, P, and Q. The origin of this terminology was alphabetic. Barkla, who worked independently from Moseley as an X-ray spectrometry experimentalist, first noticed two distinct types of scattering from shooting X-rays at elements in 1909 and named them "A" and "B". Barkla described these two types of X-ray diffraction: the first was unconnected with the type of material used in the experiment and could be polarized. The second diffraction beam he called "fluorescent" because it depended on the irradiated material. It was not known what these lines meant at the time, but in 1911 Barkla decided there might be scattering lines previous to "A", so he began at "K". However, later experiments indicated that the K absorption lines are produced by the innermost electrons. These letters were later found to correspond to the n values 1, 2, 3, etc. that were used in the Bohr model. They are used in the spectroscopic Siegbahn notation.