Consider an oxygen-acetylene flame at 3100 K.
(a) What percentage of sodium atoms introduced to this flame would exist in an excited electronic state? What percentage of zinc atoms would be in an excited electronic state?
(b) If the atomization source in an atomic absorption instrument is an argon plasma operating at 6200 K, what percentage of lithium atoms introduced to the plasma would be ionized? The ionization energy for lithium is 5.39 eV. Assume the free electron density in the plasma is 1×1021 m-3, and the partition functions for Li and Li+ are equal to unity (z =1).