CHEMISTRY COMMUNITY

I am having trouble on Question 1.13 on the homework and I'm thinking that it might be because I have Rydberg's formula or constant wrong. On Lavelle's Atomic Spectra video module it says that the Rydberg's constant is R = 3.29 x 10^15 s^-1, but online it is saying that R = 1.09 x 10^7 m^-1. Which one is the one that I use for the value of R?

I used the one given in Hz or s^-1 for question 1.13, and I think all of them should use the number in those units. When you're working on 1.13, don't forget the negative sign in the equation (this helped me realize a mistake I made in that problem).

The two numbers seem to be different because 3.29 x 10^15 has the units of s^-1 and the number you found online is in m^-1. For 13, we would use 3.29 x 10^15 s^-1 to cancel with the s^-1 unit in the speed of light constant.

In the textbook 3.29x10^15 is the number used to represent Rydberg, so I would use that value.

Yeah R = 3.29x10^15 s-1