Review Checklist - Sample Questions
Spectroscopy
Types of Spectra
- What is spectroscopy?
- What is a spectrum?
- What is a continuous spectrum?
- What is an emission line
spectrum?
- What is an absorption spectrum?
- What type of objects emit a continuous spectrum
of radiation?
- What kind of sources produce an emission
line spectrum of radiation?
- From what type of sources do we get an absorption
line spectrum of radiation?
- What type of spectrum do we get from a star
like the Sun?
Temperature and Its Effects
- What is the lowest possible temperature that
can be reached?
- How does the radiation from two identical
solid objects
with temperatures of 1000 K and 2000 K compare?
- What happens to the radiation
emitted by an object if its temperature rises/decreases?
- Do regular objects in a room
emit any kind of radiation?
Photons
- What evidence do we have that light is made
of waves?
- What evidence do we have that light behaves
like particles?
- Is light made of waves or particles? Is light
a form of energy, a wave, or a particle?
- What is a photon?
- What happens to a photon's energy if we increase
its frequency? Its wavelength?
- Which kind of photons have the highest/lowest
energy?
Atoms and Molecules
- What happens inside an atom when a photon
is absorbed?
- Why do different atoms emit waves of different
wavelength?
- Can a molecule emit/absorb radiation in more
ways than an atom?
- What kind of radiation do we normally use
to identify molecules?
And Astronomy
- What properties of a star can we determine
from its spectrum?
- Can any type of spectrum be used to identify
the substance it came from?
- How do we find the temperature of a star
from its spectrum?
- How do we find a star's radial velocity from
its spectrum?
page by luca bombelli <bombelli at olemiss.edu>,
modified 29 sep 2012