2 Chemical Descriptions of Metals

The chemical definition for metals refers to the qualities or properties of metals.

Chemical properties define metals as possessing the following traits:

• High electrical conductivity
• Luster
• Reactivity to oxygen to form oxides
• Malleability
• Readily loses electrons to form positive ions (cations)
• Forms bases rather than acids in water
• Can be an element (e.g., iron), an alloy (e.g., stainless steel), or a molecular compound (e.g., polymeric sulfur nitride)
• Solid at room temperature (except mercury, which is a liquid at room temperature and gallium flows into liquid at 86˚ F.)

Later on, the concept of the structure of metals is important. The structure is based on the chemical process of bonding. It is helpful to have a basic understanding of how metal atoms are connected to one another.

Metallic bonding is a type of chemical bonding that arises from the electrostatic attractive force between conduction electrons (in the form of an electron cloud of delocalized electrons) and positively charged metal ions. It may be described as the sharing of free electrons among a structure of positively charged ions (cations). Metallic bonding accounts for many physical properties of metals, such as strength, ductility, thermal and electrical resistivity and conductivity, opacity, and luster.

Derived from Metallic bonding – Wikipedia accessed and available online 4 December 2024.