Hydrogen atom [ENDORSED]

[Emily Widjaja 3A]

Hello,

If the hydrogen atom only has one shell, how come its electron is able to jump to energy levels like up to n=6 etc?

[AlexandriaHunt2J]

Hi! All atoms basically have an infinite number of electrons shells, but most of these shells are just unoccupied by electrons (so in hydrogen atoms, it's not that the hydrogen only has one shell, it's just that it has many unoccupied shells). Electrons tend to exist in the lowest energy state, which is why in hydrogen, its singular electron exists in the n=1 shell. However, if the hydrogen electron absorbs enough energy that's equal to the energy difference between shells n=1 and another shell, the electron becomes excited and can jump to these unoccupied shells of the hydrogen atom. Hope this helped!

[Sidharth Paparaju 3B]

One way to look at it is that each orbital is a state that the electron can be in, so as long as it gets enough energy (excited), an electron can enter a new state.

[ThomasL1L]

Atoms technically have an infinite amount of electron shells but their atoms only occupy a certain electron shell at ground state. However, when they leave ground state there is technically an infinite amount of electron shells.

[oliviahelou]

Hey!

Every single atom has an infinite amount of electron shells, and each electron can leave the ground state to go to any of these infinite electron shells.