Question

Explain how a pure metal is held together. Include a definition of a metallic bond in your explanation.

Answer 1

First of all we will have a look at how pure metals look at the microscopic level.

Here is the reperesentativve picture below.

If you observe in the above picture , we have a sea of electrons and we have the metal ions.

The electrostatic forces of the attraction between the electrons and the positively charged metal ions helps the pure metals held together.

This kind of bonding that occurs due to the electrostatis attractive forces between the conduction electrons ( in the form of cloud of delocalized elecrons and positively charged metal ions is called Metallic bonding.