On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 1:42 PM, <mix...@bigpond.com> wrote: A metal is an environment where lots of charged bodies are closely packed > together. I don't think an electron in such an environment can be truly > seen as > free. I.e. perhaps electrons in the conduction band actually migrate from > one > atom to the next, rather than wandering around freely? >
One interesting thing about a metal is the lack of discrete energy levels. Once the number of atoms grows large, the different levels blend into one another. This is kind of suggestive of a relaxing of Fermi statistics. Eric
