Nope, stop forcing me to go geeky!
This is a fundamental question in physics, when an electron in orbit around an atom absorbs energy, it gets promoted to a higher orbit corresponding to the energy absorbed. If the energy isn't exactly that of the new energy level th electron can't absorb it and it doesn't get prmotoed. Now the electron has to jump from one orbit to another. Now the actual process is called a quantum leap, it disappears from the lower energy orbit, and reappears in the higher one and def does not travel in between. for a brief instant in time the electron goes out of existance as we know it. When the electron loses the energy it drops back to the lower orbit and emits a quanta (photon) of energy. Now, this is the tricky bit, if the elctron were to exist between the levels, as it decended, it would be able to absorb the energy corresponding to the potential of the nucleus. So basically, the electron could absorb any energy from the inner orbit right the way through to the energy of the outer most orbit. Therefore it could also emit this energy band. So atoms would then emit a continuous emission spectrum. In reality, atoms only emit discrete frequecnies, corresponding to energy levels of the orbits, not the inbetween bits, so the electron can never exist inbetween orbits otherwsie we would see the energy emitted from the atom! So, the question is, where does the electron go when it jumps orbits..... Is that geeky enough?
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