Explained: What Is Bohr’s Radius and What Are Its Limitation?

BY Team Aakash Byju's

The mean radius of the orbit of an electron around a hydrogen's nucleus at its ground state is called  Bohr's radius.

It expresses the most probable distance between the electron & the nucleus of a hydrogen atom.

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The value of Bohr's radius is approximately 5.2917721067*10-11 metres.

Bohr's radius is a constant in Physics symbolised as ao or rBohr and is expressed as:

Bohr's radius has some limitations. One of them is a violation of the ‘ Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle’.

According to Heisenberg, an electron can't have both known radius and orbit.

The Bohr atomic theory helped study smaller atoms like hydrogen, but their spectral predictions were poor for larger atoms.

To explain the Zeeman effect, where the spectral line splits into components in the presence of a magnetic field.

Unfortunately the theory failed in many aspects:

To explain the Stark effect, where the spectral line splits into fine lines in the presence of an electric field.