Why is the electronic energy of hydrogen negative?
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This negative sign means that the energy of the electron in the atom is lower than energy of a free electron at rest. A free electron at rest is an electron that is infinitely far away from the nucleus and is assigned the energy value of zero. Mathematically, this corresponds to setting nequal to infinity in the equation so that E infinity= 0. As the electron gets closer to the nucleus (as n decreases), E n becomes larger in absolute value and more and more negative. The most negative energy value is given by n=1 which corresponds to the most stable orbital. And We call this the Ground State .
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