Xref: utzoo sci.physics:9929 sci.chem:543 sci.electronics:8164
Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!aplcen!jhunix!doug
From: doug@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Douglas W O'neal)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.chem,sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Valence electrons & metalic hydrogen
Message-ID: <2883@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>
Date: 11 Oct 89 12:09:44 GMT
References: <1017@mgse.UUCP>
Reply-To: doug@jhunix.UUCP (Douglas W O'neal)
Followup-To: sci.physics
Organization: The Johns Hopkins University - HCF
Lines: 32

In article <1017@mgse.UUCP> marks@mgse.UUCP (Mark Seiffert) writes:
#I just started an electronics course today and they started off by 
#covering the basics like Atomic Electron Theory. One of the things
#the taught was that the electrons in the outer most shell were called
#the valence electron. If there was one valence electron, the element
#was a conductor, if there was four, the element was a semiconductor,
#and if there was 8 valence electrons, the element was an insulator. 
#Thats fine, then they went to a periodic table of elements and
#started talking about the Group I elements (those with one valence
#electron), they mentioned Cu, Ag, and Au.

#They question i have is what about Hydrogen. It has one valence
#electron, is Hydrogen gas conductive? If it is, how would you measure
#it? I remember from a long time ago when i used to read a lot there
#was an article in Scientific American (when it was a good mag) about 
#Metallic Hydrogen, it has been so long i can't remember how it was
#created or anything. Is this the state where Hydrogen is conductive?
#How is Metallic Hydrogen created?

If hydrogen gas were monoatomic then it would indeed be electrically
conductive, along with having many other interesting properties and
reactivity.  However the gaseous for is diatomic and then has two
valence electrons forming a closed shell and behaving electrically
like helium gas.  Metallic hydrogen arises in the solid form (I believe
then some pressure is also needed to move from the solid diatomic to
the metallic lattice)  and it is believed that metallic hydrogen exists
in quantity on Jupiter and other gas giants.

-- 
Doug O'Neal                  Distributed Systems Programmer
Homewood Academic Computing  doug@jhuvms.bitnet
Johns Hopkins University     mimsy!aplcen!jhunix!doug