How does energy excite electons to higher energy levels?

Question

Okay, energy can get captured by electrons in atoms, when this happens their energy level increases...... (and so on) But, how does energy excite electons if it isn't physical? Like light excites electrons for photosynthesis.... WHAT kind of energy excites electrons? How?

PS - when it says electons, I MEANT E-L-E-C-T-R-O-N-S: Electrons**

Answer 1

thumbs up. i like your question. if you try to find the definition of energy you only get definitions that go in circles and point back and forth to what energy really is.
i think laser would be a good way of explaining it. electricity, electrons, turns off and on a lot and when it is on it adds a lot of energy to say a crystal and it bumps the electrons up to a higher level, but when the energy turns off, what goes in must come out and the electrons dont have enough power to stay in a higher place so it goes down a level and an electron is released and theres where we get laser light. explains energy exciting electrons to higher levels.
hope its what you needed and merry christmas. :)

Answer 2

E=mc^2. "Energy" is a term which is used to describe something which is best described as Energy. Absolutely circular. It is an extremely sucessful generalization of many different things. Heat energy, chemical potential, mechanical potential, gravitational potential, and the list goes on. But when you say "energy", do you mean "electromagnetic radiation"?

It (EMR) is physical. A free electron (not in an atom) can absorb any quanta of electromagnetic radiation. Once constrained to an orbital in an atom, it is limited to only absorbing specific quanta because of the "rules" of Quantum FIeld Theory, or is it QUantum Mechanics, or maybe String Theory?... Wait a minute, don't these theories just describe what really is (or has and will be) happening? Are they rules or are they descriptions? Well if we believe they always work then they are rules, if we don't, then they are descriptions...but I digress...
An electron is (according to most theores of atomic matter) a fundamental particle. It can be characterized by its energy, spin and ... but again I digress. It has no internal structure - another way to think of this belief in its fundamentalness is to think of it as something without any internal parts (fundamental, see?) so there is no way we can describe how an electron absorbs energy. We have to just take it or leave it. It just does. The nucleus, on the otherhand has internal constituents, protons and neutrons, which have their own internal parts (quarks) so we CAN ask how it absorbs energy. But thats not chemistry, thats physics, and Homeland Security may be interested in why you want to energize nucleons!
Anyway. Electrons interact by several of the forces we know of today: gravity (but its so small that this doesn't become significant usually), electromagnetism (obviously), and the weak force( this last one I think is correct but ask a physicist!). Hence any of these three fields can interact with electrons and transfer energy. Generally it is EMR. So photons can be absorbed and protons and electrons can collide with an electron.
These are all very different (real) processes but all involve energy transfer. Actually, we generally assume that when we say collision we actually mean the two particles get close enough to exchange (virtual) photons, not that these infinitely small bits are likely to "touch" - whatever that means.
So energy is a term like entropy. Perhaps Entropy is less familiar. Entropy is what Entropy is and you'll learn a little about it in school, but what you'll learn is that they use the term as a generalization of a lot of different things. Since it works it is useful. You'll learn specific examples of using the term and maybe get a feel for it if you study it long enough. But fundamentally it is a concept used across may different specific meanings to convey an idea. This is exactly what the term "energy" is, too!
In an orbital only specific quanta are "allowed" to be absorbed by the electron. But quanta which have more than enough energy to ionize the atom and kick the electron out can all be absorbed, no matter what. So, we generally talk about quanta of EMR in certain classes: micor and radio wave, infrared, visible, UV, X and gamma ray - because they generally do different things to an atom when they are absorbed. This way we can pretend that the frequencies of light absorbed by the atom are "limited". As they are for certain frequency ranges (and intensities but again not to digress). So to answer: EMR energy excites electrons, described by the quantum mechanical Schroedinger Equation (has to be relativistic (a la Einstein) QM for the very heavy atoms). And I don't think you'd find many scientists agreeing that it isn't physical. The problem is that we are using math to describe the physical and the math isn't physically real. This must happen when we are thinking about things outside our experience (too big, too small, too fast, too slow, or just too complicated). That is, we think using concepts which aren't directly linked to what ever it is we are thinking about. But for things we cant see, smell touch or hear, what choice do we have? The math has been shown to be accurate to many many decimals, so its a very good proxy for concrete understanding.

Answer 3

When you are describing quantium mechanics you use the schrodinger equation to describe the system, this is the most fundamental quantity. The Hamiltonian of the system is the kinetic plus the potential energy and is contained in the schrodinger equation. The eigenvalue of the Hamiltonian gives the energy of a system. So when an atom absorbes a photon, the eigenstate of the electron is changed and this leads to a larger eigenvalue of the Hamiltonian, which is called Energy.

Answer 4

Ways To Excite Electrons

Answer 5

I had a rather eccentric chemistry teacher who once said (I kid you not)

"If I were to plug you in to the mains - you'd jump around a bit as well"

As a metaphor, it worked quite well I thought.