Question

what is the electronic configuration of carbon in its excited state

Answer 1

Carbon Electronic configuration
1s2,2s2,2p2
Bonding in any element will take place with only the valence shell electrons.carbon has four valence electrons, two in the 2s subshell and two in the 2p subshell. There are two unpaired electrons in the 2p subshell, so if carbon were to hybridize from this ground state, it would be able to form at most two bonds. Recall that energy is released when bonds form, so it would be to carbon's benefit to try to maximize the number of bonds it can form. For this reason, carbon will form an excited state by promoting one of its 2s electrons into its empty 2p orbital and hybridize from the excited state. By forming this excited state, carbon will be able to form four bonds