The outer layer of the Earth is called <span>crust!</span>
The extra energy that the electron suddenly has had to
come from somewhere, so I can assume that one of
two things happened:
either 1). A photon passed by and the electron absorbed it.
or 2). Somebody hooked up a battery or a generator in
such a way that the electron was bathed in a field of electrostatic
potential, and suddenly had the get-up-and-go to jump to a higher
energy level, and possibly even to leave its atom completely and
zip over to a neighbor atom.
