Differentiate between ground state and exited state with example?
The ground state of an atom or molecule is the lowest energy state that the particles can occupy, while an excited state is any energy state above the ground state.
Example:
Consider a hydrogen atom. In its ground state, the electron is in the lowest energy orbital, the 1s orbital. This is the most stable configuration for the hydrogen atom and is the ground state.
If the hydrogen atom absorbs energy, such as through the absorption of a photon of light, the electron can be promoted to a higher energy state. For example, the electron could be excited to the 2s orbital, which is a higher energy level than the ground state. In this excited state, the hydrogen atom is less stable and will eventually return to the ground state by emitting a photon of light.
In this way, the ground state is the lowest energy state of a system, while an excited state is any energy state above the ground state that can be reached by adding energy to the system.