Why the Stern-Gerlach experiment didn't detect the L?

[patric44]

Homework Statement

in the stern gerlash experiment why didn't they detect the magnetic moments originated from the orbital angular momentum ?

Relevant Equations

μ = q/2m L

i recently read about the stern-gerlach experiment and found out that they did it in the first place to verify the principle of the "space quantization " introduced by Bohr , and they thought they did detect the quantization of the orbital angular momentum of ( L = 1 , m = 1,-1 ) neglecting the fact that they didn't found a third line associated with the m = 0 , and later on after Phipps and Taylor's experiment they detect a slimier two spots for hydrogen which indicated that , what had been found in the original S-G experiment was the magnetic moment due to spin angular momentum .
my question is : why didn't they detect the magnetic moment due to the orbital angular momentum in the original S-G experiment ?

 

[jedishrfu]

It could simply be that their apparatus was not sufficiently sensitive enough and if they did see anything couldn’t decide if it was some form of statistical error in measurement or a real effect.

 

[Vanadium 50]

What orbital angular momentum? Silver is [Kr], with L=0, 4d10 with L=0, and 5S1, with L = 0.

 

[patric44]

What orbital angular momentum? Silver is [Kr], with L=0, 4d10 with L=0, and 5S1, with L = 0.

ok! that make sense thanks , but that raise a question on my mind , why would they choose silver atoms as a subject for the experiment to verify angular momentum quantization ?! or they simply didn't know that it just didn't have orbital angular momentum .
another question : had they have choose another atoms , they would really verify space quantization right . or the addition of orbital and spin angular momentum would make a mixture of states with different net angular momenta and they would have got some strange results .

 

[Vanadium 50]

Stern proposed the experiment in 1921 and Gerlach performed it in 1922, so they were doing it before the Schroedinger Equation and modern atomic theory. Whatever caused them to pick silver was certainly not its electronic configuration, since that hadn't been worked out yet.