Physics 133
Spring Quarter 2004
10 May 2004
Email the quiz back to me at aubrecht@mps.ohio-state.edu.
Put your name and email address at the top of the quiz.
The quiz is due before class today, 10 May 2004.
How does an electron in a metal act? How can the electron be “bound” to the entire metal? Explain.
Gordon’s solution will appear here
The electron is shared among all ions in the metal. The mechanism is the phenomenon of band formation. When a quantum system has two identical states, it is okay if the system is composed of bosons, but it is NOT ALLOWED to occur if the system is composed of fermions.
This is a result of the Pauli Exclusion Principle.
So the quantum system responds by making the energies almost (but not quite) degenerate. In this way, the states are not identical and the system is allowed to exist. So the eelectron can exist in the neighborhood of any ion in the system. It is in this way that it is bound to the metal as a whole.
Note that the electron should have a greater probability of being in between the ion locations, and therefore the ions are attracted to the electron locations--so this is similar to the situation for covalent bonding of hydrogen discussed in class.
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