Past exam of the short options paper shared by Prelims and Parts A and B of the physics course of the University of Oxford / 2012 / S3 / 2 / 1

In the Franck-Hertz experiment, electrons emitted from a heated cathode are accelerated through a dilute atomic vapour toward a collector. A small retarding potential before the collector rejects electrons that have lost too much kinetic energy. Below the first excitation threshold, mainly elastic collisions occur and the collector current rises as the accelerating voltage increases. At threshold an inelastic collision can transfer a definite excitation energy to an atom, causing a current drop because the slowed electron cannot overcome the retarding potential.

Raising the voltage further permits acceleration again, and repeated losses produce successive current minima. For mercury their spacing is about $4.9\mathrm{V}$, corresponding to an atomic excitation of about $4.9\mathrm{eV}$ and an associated ultraviolet photon near $254\mathrm{nm}$. Contact potentials shift the absolute voltages, so the spacing is more informative than the first minimum's position alone. Discrete energy losses support discrete atomic energy levels; a continuously variable excitation energy would not produce the same recurring fixed loss scale. The experiment establishes quantized excitations without requiring the classical electron orbit of the Bohr model to be literally correct.