Ionisation Potentials and Conductivities of Metals

Abstract

ON the hypothesis of the existence of ‘free electrons’ in metals, Drude, Lorentz, and recently Sommerfeld have explained the Wiedemann and Franz law, namely, that the ratio of the thermal and electrical conductivity is the same for all metals, and is proportional to the absolute temperature. In a paper by Mukherjee and Ray, to appear shortly, the authors, in order to explain the conductivity of metals, have pictured the ‘valency shells’ of the neighbouring atoms as touching each other, and thus forming a large equipotential surface in the metal crystal. Electrons in this surface travel freely without doing any work, and in this restricted sense they are termed ‘free’.