system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What happen if an electron is struck by a photon that is more energetic than the amount needed to get to the first orbital but less energetic than the second?

I know that electrons can only jump to higher energy levels if struck by a photon at the frequency equal to the difference in the initial and final states. However, what happens to an electron in the ground state (lets say) if struck by a photon with the energy of 4eV if the energy needed to get to the first energy level is 3eV. The electron cannot exist between orbitals, and yet it has enough energy to get to the next orbital. How does the electron "know" it cannot exist in certain "heights"? And if the electron cannot jump to the next energy level, then what happens?

EDIT: Lets assume that it takes 4eV to get from the ground state to the first orbital, and 1eV can be absorbed to account for all the energy lost in heat and other factors. If I send one 6eV photon to one electron in the ground state, then what happens? Assuming that it takes 7eV to get to the second orbital. Can electrons absorb 5eV of the 6eV that was sent by the photon or does that violate the photoelectric effect? Also assume that we are talking about one atom.
gpt
In the most straightforward case, the photon won't be absorbed.
Because of this, we see absorption 'lines'; if absorption happened "at energy X or more", we would only see the edge of the longest-wavelength (lowest-energy) absorption line, and everything above that energy would also be absorbed (giving a sort of 'absorption rectangle' that goes up to arbitrarily high energies).

There are processes by which the energy from a photon can be distributed among more than one 'effect' -- ie, moving an electron between orbitals and at the same time creating another photon of lower energy, or pushing the atom around (and creating heat/phonons), etc. These are less likely to occur than the one photon -> one changed orbital transition, but they are still fairly influential in determining the absorption spectrum of most solids and liquids, and some gasses.