ABSTRACT
In order to understand the properties of metals, it is necessary to understand the role of electrons in metals. We already know that the metallic bond has to do with electrons that become delocalized from their parent ion cores and are more or less free to move around in the metal. To the first approximation, treating the electrons as an ideal Fermi gas does a fairly good job of explaining most of the properties of metals, but there is more to it as we shall see.
