a 2.2 the adventure continues let's look at absorption spectra so if a continuous spectrum of light that's all wavelength of light is shown an atom then what might happen is that some of those wavelengths will be absorbed and so if you were to look at the spectrum after the light has been shown through there will be black bands where there is missing energies in this case corresponding to the missing kind of purple and yellow light now what happened to that energy well they were used to excite the electrons into a an energy level that are further away from the nucleus and I'm aware that specters plural I should have put a continuous spectrum an absorption spectrum spectrum being singular so let's look at emission spectra if you were to heat up atoms or apply a voltage as a fit with electricity if you will then the electrons might be promoted they might be excited up to a higher energy level and once there they'll go around a few more times at this higher energy level and then they'll drop back down again in dropping back down their release a photon and if you can collect these photons then you'll produce a line spectrum which is the same as an emission spectrum as far as IB are concerned it's the inverse of what happened before here there are lines of light whereas before light was missing now it's not often I put stuff in that you don't actually have to know for IB but I think this little story might help lock in your understanding of what we just looked at when they first looked at the spectra of the Sun they found some extra lines they couldn't account for there was a bright yellow eat orange one they thought that was probably sodium and then some green lines their new elements may be is it Caronia is it Naboo Liam they found that these green lines in corona of the Sun and in nebulae from stars so what were these lines then maths and science got a bit better and they worked out it might be Oh two plus an iron 13 plus that just doesn't feel right either there's a quite unusual of rare he yeah it turned out they'd found he they found it on the Sun before they found it on earth common question asked by smartypants kids with the absorption spectra the first one surely when the electron goes back in it releases the light that it absorbed so overall there's no change well I thought about this and I'm pretty sure that the light goes in a random direction it doesn't go towards the detector in this case on the right so the absorption spectra are still going to have those gaps