Introduction to the free electron gas model Video 7 of 13

In this video I introduce the free electron gas model for describing ideal metals. The Fermi-Dirac distribution is derived. The k-space formalism for describing the quantum solutions is presented and from this the density of states is presented. As a first application the heat capacity of metals is computed, which is shown to be two orders of magnitude smaller than the heat capacity of a classical gas, consistent with observation. This is video 7 of the 13 part series.