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Up-to-date
literature on the Franck-Hertz experiment
Searching online
Seeking information online is heartbreaking. Typing "franck-hertz" in
"Google"
produces 50600 hits. A random perusal shows that most of them are
"lab-manuals"
posted by teachers, presumably for their own students. None of those is
satisfactory.
It is easy to demonstrate, for example, that at least with mercury, the
experiment
works regardless of the sign of the potential between the accelerating
grid
and the anode. This was pointed out in the literature more than 20
years
ago (see McMahon 1983 below) and clearly implies that the present
textbook
explanation must be revised. It also shows that the majority of physics
instructors
are oblivious of recent progress. Fortunately, there is now a way to
obtain the "serious" references among remarkably few items of the
undesirable variety.
Google Scholar produces only
52 hits
which include several of the items listed below.
- References
- Standard
Franck-Hertz Experiment
1) Melissinos A C 1966
Experiments in Modern Physics (New
York:
McGraw-Hill) pp. 8-17
2) Franck J and Hertz G 1914
Verh.
Deutsche
Phys. Ges. 16 457
3) Franck J and Hertz G 1925
Nobel
lectures
F-H Nobel
pdf
4) Genoglio R J 1973
Am. J. Phys.
41 288 : Average energy of
electrons
in a Franck-Hertz tube.
5) Huebner J S 1976
Am. J. Phys.
44 302 : Comment on the
Franck-Hertz
experiment.
6) McMahon D R A 1983
Am. J. Phys.
51 1086 : Elastic collision
effects
in the Franck-Hertz experiment.
7) Hanne G F 1988 Am. J. Phys. 56
696 : What really happens in the Franck-Hertz experiment
with mercury?
8) Robson R E, Li B and White R D 2000 J. Phys B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 33 507-520:
Spatially periodic structures in electron swarms and the
Franck-Hertz
experiment.
Spatially
Periodic pdf
9)
Siegeneger F and Winkler R 2002
Eur.
Phys. J. AP
19 211: On
the kinetics of electron
trapping
in the Franck-Hertz experiment.
10) Siegeneger F, Winkler R and
Robson
R E 2003 Contrib. Plasma Phys.
43 178-197 : What really
happens with the electron gas in
the famous
Franck
experiment?
Electron gas pdf
11) Nicoletopoulos P and Robson R E 2008
Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 124502: Periodic electron
structures in gases:
A fluid model of the "window" phenomenon.
Fluid
Model
pdf
- Extended Franck-Hertz Experiment
1) Harnwell G P and Livingood J J 1933
Exper. Atomic Phys. (New York:
Academic)
pp. 317-318
2) Melissinos A C 1966 3) Mohler F L, Foote P D and Meggers
W
F 1920
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 4 364 -370 : Resonance
potentials and low-voltage arcs for metals of the
second
group of the periodic table.
Mohler.pdf