Solange Kershaw: Hydrogen

Abstract

I was once confronted by a car full of tennis balls in a shopping mall. There was a sign leaning up against the car saying 'Guess the number of balls and win the car!' I was ten years old and knew the answer existed: could one guess or was it possible to think it through deduction? Then I marvelled at what strange and wonderful creatures we are to have thought of the car, the tennis ball AND the competition. Hydrogen is adult-speak for the fact that I am still marvelling. (Vivien) Hydrogen is an experiment in time shifting. According to the quantum hypothesis, when an atom receives a certain packet of energy, it emits or absorbs light corresponding to that energy level. Only at certain specific energy levels will the atom be excited, and it will not respond to energy between these levels. The various discrete packets of energy form the spectrum of that atom. The Balmer series tells us what the energy spectrum of the hydrogen atom is. Light is a vibration. Sound is a vibration. What if you were looking out the window and time had slowed down outside so much that light lost its place in the electromagnetic spectrum and you, on the other side of the window, would perceive it as sound? What would the world sound like? By dividing the series by a very large number, we can 'slow' these vibrations down to audible parts of the spectrum. This process yielded five notes. This is what hydrogen would sound like. Show more