CHEMISTRY COMMUNITY

The textbook says for H and He atoms, since they have only one or two electrons which can occupy any orbitals, then how should we write the electron configuration for these 2 atoms? 1s1 1s2 or others?

I am also confused about this. When the single electron in an H atom is excited up to, say, 5p, does it just bypass all the intermediate shells and subshells? Does it drop immediately down? Can it exist in that excited state for long? I'm just not sure I'm conceptualizing this properly...

We write electron configurations for the ground state, so yes it would be 1s1 for H and 1s2 for He. An excited H electron will pass all energy levels up to the one matching the energy of the photon, and then fall right back down to release the energy as light.

The electron configuration for H is 1s1 and for He is 1s2. If the element is stated as being an anion or cation then you would accordingly add or remove electrons.