gasseous metal

[Zolar V]

what would be the potential current traveling through a Gasseous metal such as iron?

[insane_alien]

well, a metal atom in the gas state is non conductive. this is because there is no longer a sea of delocalised electrons to provide conductivity.

 

the only way to induce conductivity is to ionize it and then its not a gas any more but a plasma and will follow the same set of rules as any plasma.

 

i don't know what you mean by 'potential current' there isn't really a maximum current for anything, it just depends on how much voltage you apply.

[Zolar V]

ok let me get into more detail.

i was wondering if you had a gasseous metal in a area that fills it in such a way that one atom is close enough to another atom to allow for normal current flow similar to a solid piece of metal, what would be the total resistance or impedance to the flow of electrons.

i would think that because of the increased energy state that there would be less resistance to current flow, therefore increasing the amount of current that could be applied to the metal gas.

[insane_alien]

if the atoms are that close and bound in a way that allows normal conduction mechanisms then it is a solid(or a liquid depending on temperature and pressure.)

 

as i said before, there isn't a limit to how much current can be put through something. it only depends on the voltage applied. if you want more current then apply more voltage.

[Sisyphus]

"Increasing the amount of current that can be applied" is meaningless. You can apply any amount of current. What you're thinking of is how much resistance there will be, and the answer is that there will be a lot more than in the solid or liquid states. Gaseous iron would basically not be conductive at all. If it was ionized, it would be conductive, but that's plasma, not gas. The hypothesis of higher temperature = less resistance is false.

[insane_alien]

yes, even keeping it a solid, the resistance will rise with temperature(although plasmas tend to be a bit strange with resistance.)

 

as always there are one or two exceptions to the rule(compounds that experience greater conductivity with rising temperatures) but they tend to only be over a particular temperature range.

[Zolar V]

huh, thats interesting. honestly i was thinking that the increased temprature would allow the electrons to move about more freely. but it looks like its quite the opposite.

 

originally i was thinking about this because i was thinking about tolemaik reactors and how they use electricity to heat the gas iand change it to plasma. but i was also thinking about resistance on circut boards and how iron,silver,gold,copper have a specific impedance to current traveling through the circut and how much heat is produced as a result.

 

for some reason its still not quite making sense to me. if you have 2 metal atoms at 50* K both in a solid form(obviously) and their resistance is lets say 1, you would think that adding heat (energy) would allow the electrons to move about more freely. if you were to base the observation on the standard atomic model.... but if you have 2 metal atoms at 2000*k in a gasseous state but still appearing to be solid (aka the atoms have not moved away from each other), their resistance is <1?

[Sisyphus]

if you have 2 metal atoms at 50* K both in a solid form(obviously) and their resistance is lets say 1, you would think that adding heat (energy) would allow the electrons to move about more freely.

 

It doesn't, though. Increasing the temperature of a metal increases electrical resistance.

 

but if you have 2 metal atoms at 2000*k in a gasseous state but still appearing to be solid (aka the atoms have not moved away from each other),

 

I don't know what "appearing to be solid" means.

 

their resistance is <1?

 

The resistance of metallic gases is much, much higher than solids.

 

Metallic bonding is, simplistically, like a "sea of electrons" shared in common with a lattice of nuclei. So they can flow freely. The more they are knocking around relative to one another, the less smooth the flow of electrons can be. And if they're separated entirely (i.e. gasseous), the electrons aren't shared at all, and they can't flow.

[insane_alien]

lets look at mercury, at and below 4.2K the resistance is exactly 0, its super conductive.

 

as we warm it up it loses super conductivity and has a non-zero resistance. as we warm it up this resistance gradually increases until you reach its boiling point where it shoots up abruptly becoming so high as to classify it as an insulator, there would be dielectric break down beforce conduction occured.

 

this is what happens. you cannot change this. gasses are absolutely crap at conducting electricity.

 

also, your ideas behind gasses and solids are very very confused. if the molecules of a substance remain rigidly ordered then it is a SOLID. if they are far appart and flying free in an essentially random fashion then it is a GAS.

 

it can not be one while having all the properties of the other. its like saying the sun is actually navy blue but it just has all the properties of yellow.

 

tokamaks(i assume this is what you meant) use plasma, now plasma is conductive as it has free charge carriers but it is NOT a gas. the only properties it shares with gas is that its constituent components are whizzing around freely in a random manner without being bound to an ordered structure.

 

gaseous materials whether metal atoms or not are not conductive.

[Zolar V]

ok, cool.

 

ill look it up later for a more in depth look