Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-chemistry-course-of-the-year-3-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2022/paper-2a/section-b/22/b/ii/solution

Averaging the left-minus-right differences across the three rows gives lower-state spacings of about and . Their difference is , so
Similarly, averaging successive down-column differences across the three columns gives upper-state spacings of about and . Hence
Using the first row and first column alone would give approximately and , respectively. The small inconsistency between nominally identical spacings is already present in the entries; it should be treated as limited data/model precision rather than fitted by assigning different lower-state constants to different rows. Values near for the lower state and for the upper state express the supported precision.

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