excited vs ground state

[cherublina1l]

what is the difference between an excited electron's configurations vs it's ground state? How would we write/identify either of them?

[Rhea Jain 2I]

The difference is that in ground state, electrons in a system are in the lowest possible energy levels. The excited state is any state of the system that has a higher energy than the ground state.

The ground state electron configuration of an element is the same as the regular configuration in which the electrons are in the lowest possible energy state. For example, the ground state electron configuration of oxygen is 1s2 2s2 2p4.

The excited state electron configuration shows when an electron is excited and jumps into a higher orbital. For example, sodium in its excited state would have an electron configuration of 1s2 2s2 2p6 3p1, compared with its ground state of 1s2 2s2 2p6 3s1.

[Shreya Arcot 3K]

When an atom is an excited state, its valence electrons go to a higher energy level. In the ground state, all the electrons are in the lowest possible energy level.

When given the electron configuration for a atom in an excited state, first count the number of electrons in that atom (add up the superscripts to do this). Then, looking on the periodic table, find the atom with that many electrons. Then, you can write the ground state electron configuration for that atom.

Example: If the superscripts of the excited state electron configuration add up to 8, then the atom we are looking for is Oxygen. So, the ground state electron configuration is:
1s2 2s2 2p4.