Electron excitement

[Joanna Huang]

How can we tell whether an electron is excited or not through the electron configuration? And how can an electron be excited naturally?

[Emma_Barrall_3J]

Electrons are excited when they absorb energy (like that from a photon of light). I'm not sure there is a way to show on an electron configuration as it is a temporary state.

[Sophia Stewart 3F]

I could be wrong, but I think one way to show an excited electron is have it skip an energy level in electron configuration. For example, 1s^2 2s^2 2p^5 3s^1

[Sami Siddiqui 1J]

We can tell if an electron is excited by looking at the electron configuration in a couple ways:

1. The electron is elevated to a higher shell by absorbing a photon. This would be reflected in the electron configuration by writing out the configuration as is while writing the subshell in which the electron got excited to.

2. Recall Hund's Rule, which basically states that electrons like to be as far apart from each other as they can. One of the ways this is done is by filling electrons individually into empty shells while spinning in the same direction (so all of them have a spin quantum number of + or -1/2 at a given point in time). If any of these electrons happen to be facing in the opposite direction as the rest of the electrons, this would count as an example of an excited state. This would be reflected in the electron configuration of an atom by writing the arrow notation with the up or down state.

There's probably more ways than I what I can think of at the moment. The rule of thumb is that, if there are any deviations from the ground state configuration, it is indicative of an excited state.

[AlyssaMaynard1C]

Electrons are excited when they absorb energy (like that from a photon of light). I'm not sure there is a way to show on an electron configuration as it is a temporary state.

Why is there a difference in writing the ground versus excited state? Would it be easier to use the element followed by the remaining levels notations.