Question

Yellow light emitted from a sodium lamp has a wavelength $\left(\lambda \right)$ of 580 nm. Calculate the frequency (v) and wavenumber $\left(\overline{v}\right)$ of the yellow light.

Answer 1

The wavelength of yellow light is $580nm$ = $580\times {10}^{-9}m$.

The frequency of yellow light,

$\nu =\frac{c}{\lambda }=\frac{3.0\times {10}^{8}m/s}{580\times {10}^{-9}m}=5.17\times {10}^{14}/s$.

The wave number of yellow light,

$\overline{\nu }=\frac{1}{\lambda }=\frac{1}{580\times {10}^{-9}m}=1.72\times {10}^6/m$.