Hydrogen's sole electron occupies the 1s orbital but can be excited to the 4p orbital. List all the orbitals this electron might occupy on its way back to its ground state.

Question

anonymous · Answer

@aaronq Could you try explaining this one too?

anonymous · Answer

@ilikephysics2 Help?

anonymous · Answer

do you mean this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Hydrogen_transitions.svg

anonymous · Answer

Not exactly.

aaronq · Answer

basically work you way back from 4p.. so 4p..3d.. 4s..3p..  etc

anonymous · Answer

Thank you!

anonymous · Answer

Hydrogen is only 1s

aaronq · Answer

no prob!

anonymous · Answer

If you are looking for hydrogen, then @aaronq would be wrong

aaronq · Answer

the electron is excited and it's "falling back" to ground state

anonymous · Answer

Electron orbitals are organized into "shells" by the primary quantum number, with each shell organized into "subshells" by the secondary quantum number. The following table shows the organization of the shells and subshells, along with the number of orbitals. The spin quantum number is not listed, since it always has values of U and D for each orbital, doubling the number of orbitals:

aaronq · Answer

as it falls back it will give out a photon of a certain wavelength