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The Hydrogen Atom: The History
IN CHAPTER 8, WE DISCUSSED the particle in a box problem. We imagined an electron confined to a very small one-dimensional box, as shown in Figure 8.1. The particle in a box is a useful problem because the math is simple enough to find the quantized energy levels without great difficulty. A formula was obtained that showed that the energy states of the particle in a box come in discrete steps that depend on a quantum number n, where n is an integer that starts at 1 and can take on any integer value. However, it was pointed out that this is a very artificial example of quantum confinement. In nature, there are no truly one-dimensional systems. Furthermore, the walls of the box are infinitely high and completely ...
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