[nerdster87]

I'm looking to find an answer to something I've been stuck on all day regarding electron configurations. If an electron gets excited from say 2s to 2p and the 2p subshell is already at full capacity, does an electron from the 2p shell automatically jump to the next shell which in this case would be 3s to make room?

Also, can more than 1 electron be excited through the absorption of photons and what determines which shell of electrons will be targeted? What happens to the electron in Hydrogen when it absorbs energy?

Thanks a million in advance

[Pradeep]

Normally, we consider that electrons at highest energy level is getting excited first. Core shell electrons are not getting excited.

[Quantumdotty]

Mostly it is only valence electrons that undergo excitations, as they are furthest away from the nucleus and less tightly held. Excitation will never occur going from a core shell into another filled core shell. Also the transition must be symmetry allowed. In other words the electron must not change its spin otherwise the transition occurs very slowly and is considered forbidden. Of course more than 1 electron can be promoted due to absorption of a photon. If the energy of the photon is double the transition energy there is no reason why a double excitation cannot occur (as long as it is symmetry allowed). In answer to your last question even though the electron in hydrogen is in a 1s orbital there still exists higher imagenary orbitals which are not occupied. When excitation occurs in hydrogen it simply ends up in one of these higher orbitals

[juanrga]

I'm looking to find an answer to something I've been stuck on all day regarding electron configurations. If an electron gets excited from say 2s to 2p and the 2p subshell is already at full capacity, does an electron from the 2p shell automatically jump to the next shell which in this case would be 3s to make room?

Also, can more than 1 electron be excited through the absorption of photons and what determines which shell of electrons will be targeted? What happens to the electron in Hydrogen when it absorbs energy?

Thanks a million in advance

By virtue of Pauli exclusion principle, an electron cannot jump to a state which is already occupied. The only possibility would be that a 2p electron is first promoted to an higher unoccupied level and then a 2s electron is promoted to the free 2p. However, this double process must be unlikely, because the free 2p state would be probably occupied by an higher-energy electron via de-excitation before the 2s has a chance to be promoted.

Yes more than 1 electron can be excited through the absorption of photons, what determines which shell of electrons are targeted is the frecuency of the photons, the occupancy of the levels, temperature...

When an electron in Hydrogen absorbs energy it jumps to a higher energy level from where it can emit energy and decay to a lower energy level again.