Ground state vs. Excited State

[Kayla Ikemiya 1E]

How do you differentiate whether the electron is in the excited state or the ground state?

[K Stefanescu 2I]

Most questions I've seen so far tell you if it is excited or not. From an Aufbau diagram, if there is an electron in a shell of higher energy than expected for the element (which you can determine from the electron configuration), then it is excited. Also, if unpaired electrons in a shell do not exhibit parallel spins, then one of them is excited.

[Kyle Alves 3K]

Basically for problems it helps most to write out the ground state of an element first following aufbau and the other principles. If any representation doesn't follow the principles (e.g. a pair of e- have an ms of +1/2 in an orbital), then it is excited