Quintal definition: a unit of weight equal to 100 pounds | Meaning, pronunciation, translations and examples English Dictionary | Thesaurus | Translator | Grammar | Scrabble | Blog English
Electrons in a hydrogen atom must be in one of the allowed energy levels. If an electron is in the first energy level, it must have exactly -13.6 eV of energy. If it is in the second energy level, it must have -3.4 eV of energy. An electron in a hydrogen atom cannot have -9 eV, -8 eV or any other value in between. Let's say the electron wants to jump from the first energy level, n = 1, to the second energy level n = 2. The second energy level has higher energy than the first, so to move from n = 1 to n = 2, the electron needs to gain energy.
When an electron is hit by a photon of light, it absorbs the quanta of energy the photon was carrying and moves to a higher energy state. One way of thinking about this higher energy state is to imagine that the electron is now moving faster, (it has just been hit by a rapidly moving photon).