Atoms And Nuclei

The key feature of Bohr's theory of spectrum of hydrogen atom is the quantization of angular momentum when an electron is revolving around a proton. We will extend this to a general rotational motion to find quantized rotational energy of a diatomic molecule assuming it to be rigid. The rule to be applied is Bohr's quantization condition.

A diatomic molecule has moment of inertia I. By Bohr's quantization condition, its rotational energy in the nth level (n = 0 is not allowed) is