How can an electron in an atom lose energy to go from a higher energy level to a lower energy level?

Answer 1

By emitting a photon of energy that is exactly the energy difference between two different orbitals in an atom.

Neon does it by emitting red and yellow photons.

Sodium vapor street lights do it by emitting yellow photos

Mercury vapor street lights do it by emitting purple and green photons

Those new headlights on autos look blue because the Xenon-Mercury gas combination emits a lot of blue photons.

Boron through the rest of the elements can do it by emitting x-rays characteristic of their orbital levels.

These photons or quanta (hence quantum physics) are precise packets of discrete levels of energy.

Answer 2

What everybody has said so far, that the electron has to emit, or radiate a photon is correct, as far as that goes. However, I think you were also asking, how is it possible at all. The answer is that the electron first has to gain energy and be boosted to a higher orbital (energy level). It is impossible, as far as I know, for an electron to radiate or emit a photon without having first gained the energy. Electrons do not drop below their original energy levels.

I suppose that if an atom was very highly ionized, that is, if the outermost energy level (orbital) was completely stripped of electrons, and then some of those in a lower lever were also removed, one from the outer level could return first and fill in the space of one from the lower level. But electrons are all supposed to be identical and interchangeable, anyway.

PS, We don't really KNOW whether all electrons are identical and interchangeable; that is just an assumption that we make in order to be able to carry out calculations for electrical engineering. We haven't measured them all.

So far, nobody has noticed any discrepancies. If there were any, they would probably be very small, much less than the supposed value of the mass, or charge, or whatever parameter of the electron you are discussing. We may never know.

Answer 3

It emits a photon of the specific energy necessary to go from the higher level to the lower level. The change in energy between the two levels = h(v) where h is planck's constant and v is the frequency of the photon. In order to move from a lower level to a higher level, an electron must absorb a photon of the correct energy.

Answer 4

An electron emits a photon and loses energy. There's no "transfer orbit" or "transit time" involved in the change of energy level, however. What really happens is that, having released a photon, the electron stops shaking around the nucleus in one pattern and starts shaking in another pattern that has more entropy.

Answer 5

By radiating a photon. The energy of the photon will be difference in energy of the two energy levels. At normal temperatures, the electrons will ordinarily be in the lowest energy state, but they can be promoted to higher states by heating (as in an incandescent lamp) or by collisions with electrons driven by an electric current (as in fluorescent lamps and LEDs).

Answer 6

The atoms' electron can lose energy when the orbit of the electron is shared with the orbit of another electron of another atom. Whenever something is "shared", you retain less than what you would have if it wasn't shared.

Answer 7

i don't know how a electron lose energy but i have herad that when it loses energy , the energy which is lost is converted into light

Answer 8

They emit energy as photons.

Answer 9

By emmitting a photon.