In the Bohr model, an electron's quantum jump emits or absorbs what kind of radiation?

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In the Bohr model, an electron's quantum jump emits or absorbs electromagnetic radiation.

Bohr proposed in 1913 that electrons occupy discrete stationary energy levels rather than radiating continuously while orbiting the nucleus. When an electron drops from a higher level to a lower one, the atom releases the energy difference as a photon. When it moves upward, it must absorb a photon with the matching energy. The relation is ΔE = hν, where h is Planck's constant and ν is the radiation frequency.

The radiation may lie in different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. For hydrogen, some transitions produce visible spectral lines, such as the red H-alpha line at about 656 nanometres; others produce ultraviolet or infrared radiation. “Thermal radiation” is not the canonical answer: heat can cause emission, but it is not the named radiation type in Bohr's postulate. Alpha and beta radiation are particles associated mainly with nuclear processes, not ordinary electron-shell transitions.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026

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