Band theory and conductors
Band Theory was developed with some help from the knowledge gained during the quantum revolution in science. In 1928, Felix Bloch had the idea to take the quantum theory and apply it to solids. In 1927, Walter Heitler and Fritz London discovered bands- very closely spaced orbitals with not much difference in energy. In this image, orbitals are represented by the black horizontal lines, and they are being filled with an increasing number of electrons as their amount increases. Eventually, as more orbitals are added, the space in between them decreases to hardly anything, and as a result, a band is formed where the orbitals have been filled. Different metals will produce different combinations of filled and half filled bands. Sodium's bands are shown with the rectangles. Filled bands are colored in blue. As you can see, bands may overlap each other (the bands are shown askew to be able to tell the difference between different bands). The lowest ...