What would you say to a friend who made this statement, "The visible-light spectrum of the Sun shows weak hydrogen lines and strong calcium lines. The Sun must therefore contain more calcium than hydrogen."?

Question

Darnell Crane

Physics

7 September, 15:52

What would you say to a friend who made this statement, "The visible-light spectrum of the Sun shows weak hydrogen lines and strong calcium lines. The Sun must therefore contain more calcium than hydrogen."?

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Elianna Werner · Answer 1

spectral lines or signatures of elements depend on temperature, the temperature of the sun is about 5800 K.

at this temperature most calcium atoms are excited to higher energy states than hydrogen atoms and this means that calcium atoms are gonna have more signatures than the atoms of hydrogen.

the statement that the sun shows weak hyrogen lines and strong calcium line is wrong because at the sun's temperature most of the hydrogen atoms are in lower energy states while calcium atoms are in higher energy states hence calcium has more or ''strong'' lines than hydrogen.