Determining the Series [ENDORSED]

[Ava Harvey 2B]

I just have a general question regarding certain problems from Chapter 1. How are you supposed to figure out what series (i.e. Lyman series, Balmer series, Paschen series, etc.) a certain problem is? A few questions from the homework asked about this, and I'm a little confused on how we determine that. If anyone has anything that would help I would appreciate it! Thanks so much!

[Chem_Mod]

Hello! This is Ajith Raja one of the UA's.
So for Lyman series, all the spectral lines go down to the n=1 energy level. So in the Rydberg equation for the lower energy n, you would plug in 1 for Lyman series.
The same goes for Balmer and Paschen with Balmer n=2 and Paschen n=3.
Lyman series transitions absorb/emit photons in the UV region.
Balmer is visible and Paschen its IR.
Hope this helped!

[Bansi Amin 1D]

So when we're naming the series, do we name it from the lowest energy level? Like say the electron goes from n=3 to n=1. Would we name this as Paschen since that was the initial energy state in the problem, or do we name it as Lyman since n=1 is the lower state?

[Jessica Beroukhim 3K]

The name of the series is based on which energy level n the electron drops down to at the end (not which one it started from at the top). So if it drops down to n=1 it's the Lyman series. Also n=1 is the lowest so it wouldn't make sense for there to be a series for electrons dropping from n=1.