Writing Electron Configuration

[America Alvarado]

What is the difference between excited-state electron configuration and ground-state electron configuration? and what is the difference in writing the electron configuration of each?

[Lucy Wang 2J]

For an excited state electron configuration, the electrons won't necessarily be in the "correct" (groundstate) order. For example Carbon has 6 electrons. A ground state configuration would be 1s2, 2s2, 3s2. But if one of the electrons were to be excited, then the excited-state electron configuration could look like 1s2, 2s2, 2s1, 3s1. When it is excited, one of the electrons is now located in a higher orbital than it should be.

[Margia Adriano 2A]

Hi! So we know that the ground state is an electron's most stable state, and that goes for its configuration as well. When we write out the configuration in the ground state, we will fill the lowest energy levels to their maximum first. For the excited electron configuration, when we are writing that we will see jumps in the orbitals (I'm not too sure how to word that), sort of like some of the outer electrons will be placed in a higher orbital than necessary compared to its ground state. Hope this helps!