ENVS 1050 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Fraunhofer Lines, Labin, Visible Spectrum
19 Apr 2016
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In his lab, he tried endlessly to change lead to gold. To change lead to gold, nuclear fusion is required. The normal chemistry that newton was practicing in his lab in which atoms combined to form molecules by electron-cloud interactions. For two nuclei to come together and fuse, they need to be moving very rapidly (see slide 33). The only place in nature where temperatures are suf ciently high to obtain such rapid motion is inside a star. Furthermore, the star must have been exploding (experiencing supernova nucleosynthesis) because gold is heavier than iron, and stellar nucleosynthesis only generates elements as heavy as iron (see slides 38 to 40. Fraunhofer lines: the sun"s composition is best determined by analyzing. The sun"s composition can be estimated by analyzing the light coming from the sun, and speci cally the fraunhofer lines (the dark lines) that appear in the optical spectrum generated when sunlight is split using a prism.
