Metals and electrons?

Question

why do metals carry more electrons than protons?

because their smaller?

more loosely bound?

...or what??

Answer 1

do you know anything about valence band, conduction band, band gaps etc?

may be you can search these terms in google.

Metals do not carry more electrons than protons. metal electrons are loosely bound cause they have lower electron affinity, and their band gap is smaller, so conduction band and valence band is close to each other.

Answer 2

Not all metals do.

It's because most metals exist naturally in compounds as ions so they've gained electrons to make themselves more stable.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

This is almost a good question. Metals don't carry more electrons than protons, but they do hold on to thier electrons more loosely than non-metals. That is why electricity will flow through a metal.

When electrons enter one side of a metal wire, they can easily push the other electrons out of the way because the electrons in the wire are loosely held by their atoms.Electrons that get pushed push other electron that eventually come off the other side of the wire.

At no time is there much of a build up of electrons on the wire because as electrons are added others fall off the other side.

Why are the electrons more loosely held on metal atoms? there are good answers to this question but i am not sure how much background knowlege you have.

Very basically there are several factors that contribute to how tightly an electron is held by an atom.

1) How big (positively charged) the nucleus is. Elements to the right side of the periodic table are more weakly positively charged.

2) How far away from the nucleus the outermost electrons are. Elements that are towards the bottom of the periodic table have the most electrons and have to hold some of them far away from the nucleus.

3) How well the magnetic fields of the outermost electrons are balanced. Elements that have few outer electrons are relatively unbalanced.

The most metally metal (the one that holds its electrons the loosest) is Francium. But this is not the most electrically conductive for reasons I won't go into. The most conductive is good old silver, followed by copper and then gold.

Answer 4

Metals do not have more electrons than protons.

A piece of metal has exactly the same number of protons and electrons.

In a compound a metal loses electrons and is a positive ion.

Metals conduct because their outer electrons are free to roam among all the metal atoms.