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Electrons are lazy. They don't want to do any more work than they have to. So, when they're in an atom, they're generally in the lowest possible energy level that they can occupy, called its "ground state," which translates roughly to doing the bare minimum amount of work to get by (I can relate!) But, when you apply some energy to that atom, the electron gets excited and jumps out to a higher energy level. In order to do this, the electron has to absorb some of that energy to get it out there. After a while, the electron decides it's tired of working that hard, and moves back to its ground state where it's supposed to be. At that point, the electron gives back that energy it absorbed in the form of a "photon," a bundle of light energy. Billions and billions of photons make a visible light of a certain wavelength that we can see. This is how neon lights work.

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