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We can still think of the electron as dropping to a lower, fuzzy energy-shell. What's important is this: The atom always absorbs in lumps of energy and sends out lumps of energy called photons; there's nothing continual about it.
At the subatomic level, the universe is digital but fuzzy.
CAN PARTICLES ACT LIKE WAVES
Since light, or any traveling wave, breaks down into individual bundles, can the opposite be true? Can we start out with bundles of matter and make them act like waves?
Weird Alley opens out onto I-Don't-Believe-It Avenue as we bring up the two-slit box again. If you remember, that box test convinced everyone for two hundred years that light was a wave. We now know waves were only part of the description, thanks to Planck and Einstein. To prove the quantum idea, scientists changed the box a little. Instead of shining a light (energy) through the slits, they tried firing atoms (matter) to see the overall effect. A fluorescent coating on the back screen glowed wherever an atom hit.
As pictured below, with one slit open, everything was normal. The atoms shot straight through there like little balls of matter and gradually built up a fuzzy, glowing line on the back screen. Some atoms glancing off the edge of the slit on the way through explained the fuzziness.
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