Electron Energy Levels
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Electron Energy Levels
When an electron moves up to its highest energy state, is it possible for that electron to lose just a part of the energy it gained, or does it have to lose all of it?
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Re: Electron Energy Levels
An electron can reach a high enough energy that it leaves an atom or a material. For example, an electron can be removed from a bulk metal if it has enough energy (the work function), so I'm not too sure what you mean by "highest energy level." But to answer your question, electrons CAN relax down to energy levels that are not the ground state, but this is dependent on "selection rules" which are not important for this class. This is a great question though, and you could learn about this if you choose to go on to take higher level chemistry classes.
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Re: Electron Energy Levels
When an electron moves to its highest energy state, for this example let's say it came from the first energy level. When the electron moves down to a lower energy state, it will lose a certain amount of energy that is quantized to correspond to a certain energy level. If the electron moves back to the first energy level, then it will lose the same amount of energy that it gained. The electron does not have to lose all of the energy it gained when going from the first to highest energy level, if the electron is moving from the highest energy level to another energy level different from the first level.
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