Hydrogen atom Hydrogen atom A hydrogen atom is an atom of the chemical element hydrogen. The electrically neutral atom contains a single positively charged proton and a single negatively charged electron bound to the nucleus by the Coulomb force. Atomic hydrogen constitutes about 75% of the baryonic mass of the universe. In everyday life on Earth, isolated hydrogen atoms (called "atomic hydrogen") are extremely rare. Instead, hydrogen tends to combine with other atoms in compounds, or with itself to form ordinary (diatomic) hydrogen gas, H. "Atomic hydrogen" and "hydrogen atom" in ordinary English use have overlapping, yet distinct, meanings. For example, a
Rydberg atom correspondence principle. In other words, the electron's orbit resembles the orbit of planets inside a solar system, similar to what was seen in the obsolete but visually useful Bohr and Rutherford models of the atom. There are three notable exceptions that can be characterized by the additional term added to the potential energy: Quantum-mechanically, a state with abnormally high "n" refers to an atom in which the valence electron(s) have been excited into a formerly unpopulated electron orbital with higher energy and lower binding energy. In hydrogen the binding energy is given by: where "Ry" = 13.6 eV is the