system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How does an electron drop to a lower energy shell (upon emitting a photon) if it is forbidden from occupying the space between the two shells?
gpt
This is what's meant by the phrase "quantum leap." Believe it or not, a quantum leap is actually a very very *small* change. But the point is that the electron jumps straight from one *energy* level to the next *energy* level. Now energy levels *can* occupy the same space, they're not orbits like planets, they're just a volume where the electron has some probability of occupying.