Excited State Electrons

[Kiana Rogers 1E]

What is happening to an electron when it is in an excited state?

[Alexandra Lu 2J]

An electron becomes excited after absorbing energy. It then moves to an orbital farther from the nucleus, since those orbitals are where electrons higher in energy reside (and that is because the (potential) energy between unlike charges increases with an increase in distance). The electron will inevitably release its extra energy and fall back down to the ground state, whereupon it will emit photons. We can calculate the wavelength of the photon using the Rydberg formula for a hydrogen atom.

[Sadhana Jeyakumar 2J]

An electron in an excited state has absorbed energy to jump from its ground state energy level to a higher energy level (i.e. an electron moving from 2p to 3s).

[Somin Lee]

Any electron consideration not in ground state electron configuration can be considered excited. In the excited electron configuration, electron absorbs energy and placed in other orbital.

[Anne Mariano 3F]

By colliding with other atoms or absorbing a photon, an electron gets extra energy which results in it being in an excited state. The electron configuration would then have an electron skip an orbital.