How Fast Do Photoelectrons Travel in Potassium Under 250 nm Light?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Calmeir
  • Start date Start date
Join the discussion
Registration is free. Start your own thread to ask a follow-up.
2 replies · 3K views
Calmeir
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
Alright, I am having some trouble with the following problem, because my solution I arrive at seems to be way too large. The problem is:

What is the maximum photelectron speed if potassium is illuminated with light of 250 nm?

From that I have

λ = 250 nm
f = c/λ = 3x10^8 / 250x10^-9 = 1.2x10^15
Eo of potassium = 2.3 eV

From there I tried getting the velocity by obtaining the kinetic energy.

Eelec = hf = (4.14x10^-15)(1.2x10^15) = 4.968
Kmax = Eelec - Eo = 4.968 - 2.3 = 2.668

V = √2K/m = √2(2.668)/(9.11x10^-31) = 2.42x10^15 m/s

So my calculated answer is 2.42x10^15 m/s which is much faster than the speed of light, so I know it must be wrong. I can't seem to figure out another way to arrive at an answer though. Any help is much appreciated.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Your units don't match. You either need to convert the electrons energy to joules or it's mass to eV/c^2 (that's about 511keV/c^2).
Doing a bit of dimensional analysis is usually useful if you get bizarre results from a calculation.
 
Ok, so taking the K of 2.668 eV and converting to joules I got 4.3x10^-19, then plugging those results into the my final equation I ended up with 9.7x10^5 m/s which sounds much more reasonable, but I just want to double check that I did that portion correctly. Was that the result you ended up with?