How does an electron jumping down an orbital create photons?

Question

How does an electron jumping down an orbital create photons?

In: 3

Answer 1

Think about a spaceship in orbit around the Earth. If it doesn’t do anything, it’ll stay in that orbit forever. If it wants to move into a lower orbit, it needs to fire its engines to slow itself down (decrease its energy) and get into a lower orbit. The exhaust from firing its engines goes out into space.

A similar thing happens with electrons. In order to get into a lower orbit, they don’t necessarily slow down in terms of their speed, but they need to lower their energy. To do this, they fire out a photon into space.