Talk:Energy level

Comment
The picture of the absorption and emission is wrong. The labels should be hf not hbar*f. hbar is h/2(pi) which is not correct.

I completely reviewed this page now and added an overview to the effects determining the energy level. Such an overview was missing so far on the Wikipedia but seems pretty useful.

But: it's really not complete yet and maybe the individual should be move into a proper table instead of subchapters...

The article uses, but does not define Z. The article defines, but does not use Q.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.79.24.33 (talk) 17:55, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Stub
I removed the stub marker because this article is way too long to be a stub. If someone feels like it still needs attention then they should add it to the list of pages needing attention. Starfoxy 22:04, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * By now, this article has been expanded way past the point of being a stub. H Padleckas (talk) 07:48, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

merge with quantum state
See the talk at talk:quantum state.

merging Ground state and Excited state into Energy level
The Ground state and Excited state articles are rather short and could be merged into Energy level, especially since Energy level pretty much covers their most important material anyway. I probably won't do it myself without a consensus. H Padleckas (talk) 05:39, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Electronic state should also be merged into this one. Drxenocide (talk) 17:02, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

energy of electron quantized ?
Why do we say that energy of an electron is quantized? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 113.199.240.62 (talk) 11:14, 21 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Because it cant have continuous energy values, the energy it has are functions of integers. Drxenocide (talk) 17:06, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Isolated electrons exist in a single energy state. Therefore, electron energy is not quantized.  It is atoms and molecules that can exist in any of the atom’s multiple energy states.
 * The argument about what keeps an electron from crashing into the nucleus of an atom was settled by correlating electron-proton distances to the quantized energy change of an atom converting from one energy state to a different energy state.
 * Each of an atom’s energy states has its own unique chemical and physical characteristics. For example: Hydrogen can be in a liquid state.  Liquids, including hydrogen have chemical bonding requirements.
 * Adding a quantized amount of thermal energy to liquid hydrogen can cause evaporation into one of hydrogen’s gaseous states. Hydrogen’s heat capacity changes.  Instead of multiple chemical bonds between liquid hydrogen atoms, H or H2 exists.
 * Hydrogen’s enthalpy of evaporation can include the energy needed to replace hydrogen’s liquid characteristics with gas characteristics, plus the energy to change electron-proton distance. Vze2wgsm1 (talk) 04:03, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Explanation section
Oops! I deleted the "Explanation" section by mistake; Good thing User:Chetvorno noticed and restored it. H Padleckas (talk) 01:58, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Fraction energy levels / Hydrinos
I am aware that fractional energy levels is disputed, and controversial. However, it isn't even listed here -- not even with a "This is disputed; see X for details" entry.

http://byzipp.com/energy/ talks about hydrinos matching relativistic hydrogen.

A recent press release http://www.alt-energy.info/hydrogen-power/blacklight-power-planning-demo-of-its-tech-in-2011/ claims to have independent verification and a real world demo coming.

I have no personal connection with them; I just think that, for completeness, this article should mention fractional levels, and direct readers to a more complete article.

(That "hydrino" redirects to the article on the company is a bit biased; at least the company's article indicates that it's not neutral.)

Keybounce (talk) 20:49, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * "Fractional energy levels" are not mentioned in this article because no reliable sources show any support for the idea among reputable physicists. WP requires WP:VERIFIABILITY. The sites you mention are not RSs, they are pseudoscience sites promoting "overunity" (perpetual motion) energy sources.  They sound good, don't they?   These guys have obviously got a physics education.   But there are no RSs (refereed physics journal articles, books) even mentioning fractional energy levels, that I can find.  Of the scientific papers mentioned on the sites you gave, the Rathke paper is published in an "open" journal which will accept any piece of crap.  The Bourgoin paper was presented at ISCMNS, a "scientific society" (actually a charity) which also accepts any papers presented to it, and the Naudts paper is not published but listed on arxiv an archive of papers that haven't been published.  Your websites make it seem these ideas are "disputed", "controversial", implying they have some support.  The only "controversy" is among the "alternative energy" fanatics; among physicists, there's a consensus: it's horse manure. -- Chetvorno TALK 02:55, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Only single-particle energy levels?
Just a thought... It might be worth clarifying that the energy levels discussed on the page (at least, as it is now) are specific to the case of non-interacting particles, or particles that only interact in a mean field sense. To be totally accurate with electrons in atoms, nucleons in nuclei, etc., the total Hamiltonian is many-body and so the energy levels of the total system are not exactly describable in terms of single-particle energy levels. --Nanite (talk) 17:03, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * The article is misleading and conceptually flawed from the beginning, and needs radical rewriting with expunging of system-specific stuff to topical articles and removal of many spurious references to particles, not “clarifying”. Look at energy level splitting as an example how the concept should be presented. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 18:04, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, I think I get what you mean. Definitely, the article intermixes between generality, specifics, and examples too much. I have to say though, I'm not 100% clear on what the term "energy level" means in the common sense. Simply the eigenvalue of a Hamiltonian? I know for solid state people energy levels are continuous and always refers to the single-particle approximation, whereas to a nuclear dude I guess it would refer to discrete excited states (many-body). --Nanite (talk) 00:56, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
 * It is not so simple, because there are composite quantum systems with Hamiltonians like $H = H_{1} ⊗ I + I ⊗ H_{2} + perturbation$ and conceptually similar things like single-particle approximation (although in case of identical particles it is not simply a tensor product). These are manipulations with quantum states and behavior of eigenvalues under tensor product or so which have to be explicated, of course, not Hamiltonians for concrete systems. BTW there are no continuous energy levels: the thing with continuous spectrum is a band structure. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 03:39, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Strange sentence
"Only stationary states with energies corresponding to integral numbers of wavelengths can exist; for other states the waves interfere destructively, resulting in zero probability density. "

What does this sentence mean? What are "energies corresponding to integral numbers of wavelengths"? What is the argument that states with other energies interfere destructively? My understanding is that states whose energy is outside the spectrum of H, if this is what is meant by "other states", simply don't exist, not that they self-destruct. Could someone remove this. 89.217.0.120 (talk) 13:31, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

"Orbit"
Please get rid of the reference to orbits in the second paragraph. 184.157.221.71 (talk) 22:41, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

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First Image
This article could do well to have its first image be a dirac representation of orbitals and corresponding energy levels. 98.115.164.53 (talk) 15:10, 7 July 2024 (UTC)