Flame Colors

So the main reason I wanted to take Chemistry was to play with fire and chemicals. Now I know doing either one of its safe. But you have to admit its pretty fun and in our last lab we combined the two reasons i really wanted to take Chemisrty FIRE and CHEMICALS. Earlier in the week we learned about the color emission spectrum. It goes from red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet this order also goes from the least powerful to the most powerful. We also learned that certain elements emit a colored flame when put into a flame. The electrons of a atom usually try to get as close to the nucleus as possible or its ground state, but when the are put in a flame they gain energy and become excited. When they are excited they dont stay that way, they jump from one level to another the go back to its ground state in less than a second. When they move back to ground state the energy is released in small packets of light called  photons. These photons are what actually make the color that we see. Some elements burn off the same color so you cant exactly tell which element it is by burning it. The way you can tell which element is which is by the light passing through a prism and the Atomic Emission Spectrum. After its passed through it leaves its mark almost like a tattoo. So no matter what you do to the element it will always have to the same absorption spectra. The absorption spectra is when the element absorbs certain colors. No element has the same absorption pattern. So in the lab the elements we test all had names except the last three. The last three where a combination of one of the other elements and we had to guess to which one they where. These are some of the pictures.