Are sodium and hydrogen suitable elements for flame photometry?

Not all elements are detectable by flame photometry.

When using a flame photometer to detect the concentration of an element, this element must exhibit a specific set of prerequisites to make it suitable for analysis.

The similarities between sodium and hydrogen would suggest that you could measure the concentration of hydrogen ions in solution and the acidity of a solution via flame photometry.

However, this is not the case.

What are the similarities of hydrogen and sodium?

Hydrogen and sodium are both located in period one (the first row of the periodic table).

This means they both have one electron in their outer shell in their atomic form and are relatively small in size.

They both also have a high charge density in their ionic form from the total loss of their outer electron shell (the 1sX orbital), leading to contraction of the ion's diameter.</