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When it is said an atom captures light, how long can the electron remain in excited state and is it holding some quantity of light between it and the nucleus?

Daniel Koenig
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    Is it holding some quantity of light between it and the nucleus? No. Light is produced by a transition between states. – Ghoster Jan 02 '23 at 04:47
  • So light can hit an electron in an atom, that action can make the electron temporarily remain at a greater distance from the nucleus, and it is being kept there and kept there at that distance, all because it was hit once, and then when it finally falls down (because, it ran out of that energy the light hit it with, so this is like it's orbit decayed) the amount of light it was originally hit with, is sent shooting out: – Daniel Koenig Jan 02 '23 at 05:49
  • It doesn’t decay because it “runs out of energy”, and when it does decay it doesn’t necessarily return to the previous state. – Ghoster Jan 02 '23 at 05:50
  • Why does it go back down to a lower state, and when it does it emits the light energy it recieved to get up there, that being the case I was just wondering if it possible that light energy is hiding between it and the nucleus proping it up in it's orbital. – Daniel Koenig Jan 02 '23 at 05:54
  • In quantum mechanics, everything that is not forbidden happens with some probability. The atom is forbidden to spontaneously transition to a higher-energy state, because that would violate the conservation of energy. But it can transition to various lower-energy states, with various probabilities, if it emits one or more photons to carry away the energy difference. Eventually, it gets back to the lowest energy state. – Ghoster Jan 02 '23 at 05:58
  • I geuss an analogy to express your point would be, wind blowing a ball up a hill, and the ball getting stuck wedged on the hill, but then eventually falling down creating an amount of wind equal to get it up there? While the ball was stuck, a quanta of wind energy was not required to remain between it and the flat starting surface – Daniel Koenig Jan 02 '23 at 05:59
  • You should also think of oscillation and resonance, if you strike a guitar string it plays a main note and weaker harmonics ..... if you strike it harder the harmonics can be louder for a short time ... before the main note plays. According to Maxwell the electron must have sinusoidal motion ... he figured this out as the magnetic field created by the electron motion pushes at 90 degrees to the original motion .... this is sinusoidal. The electron can only play certain notes depending on how tightly the nucleus holds it! The delta between the notes is energy levels. – PhysicsDave Jan 02 '23 at 21:13
  • Excited state at room temperature and near 0 Kelvin – HolgerFiedler Jan 03 '23 at 06:36

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