so i hear that the rydberg equation only applies for atoms with a single electron. and that further developments (like the wave function for the electron) also apply to just the one electron. how is the jump made to describe s,p,d,f shells of all the other atoms in the periodic table?
user54412
02:48
@Greg not a bad question for the main site, imo
user54412
the short answer is that fully describing multi-electron atoms can be hard
@Greg /cc @ChrisWhite The Rydberg equation used Bohr's single-electron theory. Well, it actually was based on experimental data, but it can be derived from Bohr's single-electron theory. Bohr's theory, however, doesn't describe the fine spectral structure (coming from s/p/d/f) and a bunch of other things.
If you apply the Schrodinger equation to the system, neglecting inter-electronic interactions, you get s/p/d/f
It's pretty much the only real world system with schrodinger's equation that can be exactly solved without resorting to numerical methods
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