  metallic bonding occurs as a result of electromagnetism and describes the electrostatic attractive force that occurs 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 lattice of positively charged ions (cations). in a more quantum-mechanical view, the conduction electrons divide their density equally over all atoms that function as neutral (non-charged) entities. metallic bonding accounts for many physical properties of metals, such as strength, ductility, thermal and electrical resistivity and conductivity, opacity, and luster.metallic bonding. chemguide.co.ukmetal structures. chemguide.co.ukchemical bonds. chemguide.co.ukphysics 133 lecture notes spring, 2004 marion campus. physics.ohio-state.edu metallic bonding is not the only type of chemical bonding a metal can exhibit, even as a pure substance. for example, elemental gallium consists of covalently-bound pairs of atoms in both liquid and solid stateâthese pairs form a crystal lattice with metallic bonding between them. another example of a metalâmetal covalent bond is mercurous ion (). ==history==  as chemistry developed into a science it became clear that metals formed the large majority of the periodic table of the elements and great progress was made in the description of the salts that can be formed in reactions with acids. with the advent of electrochemistry it became clear that metals generally go into solution as positively charged ions and the oxidation reactions of the metals became well understood in the electrochemical series. a picture emerged of metals as positive ions held together by an ocean of negative electrons. with the advent of quantum mechanics this picture was given more formal interpretation in the form of the free electron model and its further extension, the nearly free electron model. in both of these models the electrons are seen as a gas traveling through the lattice of the solid with an energy that is essentially isotropic in that it depends on the square of the magnitude, not the direction of the momentum vector k. in three-dimensional k-space, the set of points of the highest filled levels (the fermi surface) should therefore be a sphere. in the nearly free correction of the model, box-like [[brilloui
Chemical_bonding Metals