(c) Dr Paul Kinsler. [Acknowledgements & Feedback]

This is part of an information maze -- see the index-file for the full picture.

Solids

Solids are all made up of close packed atoms or molecules. While these can vibrate slightly (see phonons) about their positions, they are fixed in place. If enough energy is supplied to the atoms, they can escape their fixed positions, and the solid can become a liquid or gas.

If the atoms or molecules form a regular array, or fixed formation, then the solid is called a crystal.

The electrons in atoms form a series of clouds around their nucleus. The electrons in solids do a somewhat similar thing. The innermost electron clouds remain unaffected by other nearby atoms in the solid, but the outer clouds change. Usually these outer electrons are "shared" amongst nearby atoms or even sometimes by the whole solid.

Electrons clouds around an atom form a "ladder" (see atoms). Similarly we can describe the shared electrons as being on a set of shelves, where each shelf can contain a certain fraction of the total number of shared electrons. Higher shelves represent shared electron clouds with more energy. Usually the electrons prefer to congregate on the lowest possible shelves, but since the shelves can fill up, there can be shared electrons in several different shelves, and the highest occupied shelf may only be partly filled.

Different solids will have different "sets of shelves", at different heights and with different sizes, depending on what atoms it is made of.

Depending on the number and arrangement of electrons in these "boxes", the solid can be a conductor, insulator, or semiconductor.

XINDEX: wave, semiconductor, semiconductor-structure, semiconductor-structure, quantum-computer, liquid, insulator, gas, conductor, atom, index-file.

19990610 1205 19961128 (c) Paul Kinsler

XKEYWORD: solid

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