micahduron / electronmass

Calculates the mass of an electron from the spectral lines of Hydrogen

ElectronMass

This is a script that calculates the mass of an electron given experimental data collected from the emission spectra of Hydrogen and Mercury. In addition to calculating the mass, this script also calculates the total experimental error of the mass calculation.

This script was written for my General Physics III course in community college.

How it works

The mass calculation involves plugging the collected values into derived equations. The experimental error is calculated via standard propagation of errors, for which each partial derivative of the mass function must be known. A numerical differentiation technique is used to calculate these derivatives.

License

MIT License