Understanding Energy Differences in Free Electron Metals

  • Thread starter Thread starter blueyellow
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Electron Metal
blueyellow

Homework Statement



a) Explain why in a free electron metal it is not possible for all electrons to have the same energy.

b) Why is the specific heat of simple metals at room temperature much lower than that calculated for a classical gas of electrons?


The Attempt at a Solution



a) Because there are conduction and valence electrons which have different energies. Also draw some graph showing the range o energies electrons can have - but then, how would I explain the graph of g(E) vs E that is a curve?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Your g(E) vs. E is presumably the Fermi-Dirac distribution. Its provenance can't be explained in a short posting. It includes the Pauli exclusion principle and applies to all fermions, not just electrons.
 
To solve this, I first used the units to work out that a= m* a/m, i.e. t=z/λ. This would allow you to determine the time duration within an interval section by section and then add this to the previous ones to obtain the age of the respective layer. However, this would require a constant thickness per year for each interval. However, since this is most likely not the case, my next consideration was that the age must be the integral of a 1/λ(z) function, which I cannot model.
Back
Top