Answer
ground or excited state
Work Step by Step
For this problem, we are asked to determine whether the electrons are in the ground or the excited state. To do this, we look at their configurations and see if they represent the way that we would normally add electrons to shells. This could be in the ground state, since the configuration is the way that it would normally be written. However, since the electrons could be excited within the p shell, we cannot know for sure.
