## Electrons Falling to Intermediate Energy Levels

H-Atom ($E_{n}=-\frac{hR}{n^{2}}$)

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### Electrons Falling to Intermediate Energy Levels

Is it possible for electrons to fall to intermediate energy levels? For example, could an electron that is excited to the energy level n=5 fall to n=3 before returning to the ground state?

Additionally, since each of the changes in energy levels would have a different change in energy (such as n=5 to n=3 would have a different delta E than n=5 to n=1), would they each emit a different wavelength of light?

Bella Bursulaya 3G
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### Re: Electrons Falling to Intermediate Energy Levels

Hi! Yes I believe that is possible. It happens around us all the time! When an object absorbs visible light, it will often reemit this light as infrared, so it's not jumping back to ground state immediately, but giving off its energy different than how it acquired it. So yes, the energy would change as it returns to ground state, if it doesn't jump from n = 5 to n = 1 immediately. I believe it would be released, in the context of your example, in two separate photons.