I’m not a chemist, but I disagree. You can study elements and discover their properties, such as whether they are metallic or not, but asking why boils down to asking why the physical laws are the way that they are. That is not a question that science can answer.
The physical laws just are the way that they are - unless you believe a god or some other entity defined them with a certain purpose, it does not make much sense to ask why they are like that.
That’s blatantly incorrect. The properties of metals is an emergent property that arises from how atoms interact with each other.
Dense network of bonds with a lot of electrons -> higher chance of absorbing incoming light of a particular wavelength -> electron gets excited to the precise energy level of the incoming light due to the dense network of molecular orbitals -> electrons releases the exact amount of energy absorbed when it falls back to ground level -> a photon with equal wavelength to the light that was absorbed is emitted -> we observe that as something being shiny.
There’s nothing fundamental about why metals are metallic - inorganic chemists don’t just spend their entire day looking at elements and categorizing them as metals or not. Their entire job is figuring out why metals are the way they are. If you want to debate about why quantum mechanics (which is what ultimately causes atoms to interact in a particular way) is the way it is, then sure, we don’t know that yet. But then you’d be talking about an entirely different topic than the one that was asked
I think either you’re misunderstanding me or you have a different philosophy about the kinds of questions science can answer than I do - which is fine, that’s my whole point.
You tried here to provide a kind of explanation, but I personally don’t see that as an answer to “why”. I mean you say it is because of a dense network of bonds with a lot of electrons. But I could just ask “okay, but why is there this dense network of bonds?”.
Then you could give me some additional “explanation” and I could again just ask “okay, but why is it like that?”. And I could keep asking why.
My point is that any explanation you give ultimately will boil down to something you observed to just be like that. At some point I’ll ask “okay but why” and you’ll have to just say “it just is like that” - science cannot give you an answer for “why” something is.
This isn’t a matter of just studying the laws of physics further. Even if you studied something more and got another explanation to something more fundamental, I could just ask “okay but why is it like that?” again.
Again, you may disagree that science can’t answer “why” - but that kinda just proves my point that the answer depends on your philosophy and conceptions around what science can and cannot answer.
I address this in the last sentence of my previous post.
To reiterate, your argument does not matter because if you keep asking why, you are no longer answering the question that is being asked, but an entirely different question altogether. You can answer why there are so many metals. We might not figure out why the laws of physics are the way they are, but if you’ve gotten to that point where you’re trying to answer that question, then you’ve deviated so far from the original question that you weren’t even trying to respond to it to begin with.
Well, again, I don’t agree that you can. I wouldn’t call that an answer to “why”. That’s okay, we can disagree. That doesn’t make my original answer wrong - just a different perspective.
Why is the sky blue? Why is water wet? Why does the sun shine? Why does water flow downhill? Fucking magnets, why do they work? We can never know! These are all questions that you too can easily prove that science will never answer, if you just boil them down enough that they lose all their flavour and turn into incomprehensible mush.
“Why” is a valid question until and only until you get to the edge of knowledge. At that point it’s “physical laws”.
For example, “Why is the sky blue?” is a valid question and has answers.
"Even seemingly impossible questions like, “Why is there magnetism.” can be answered by applying special relativity to electric fields. (Feynman answered this question poorly in the Horizon interview which might be where you got the idea that why is a bad question.)
You end up at, “Why are there photons?” which can’t be answered. (Or maybe can’t be answered yet.)
My interpretation of the question was why so many elements in the periodic table are metal and that does have an answer. It relates to the number of electrons on the outer shell that are mobile because the more electrons in an atom, the “farther” away they are and therefore are mobile. That electron mobility gives the element properties that we call “metal”.
I don’t disagree that that is a valid way to interpret the question. However, there were plenty of comments to answer that interpretation and I felt that an answer to the more fundamental interpretation could also be useful, for perspective.
I was just offering another viewpoint. Unfortunately that often results in downvotes. Oh well.
That’s incorrect - this question is literally what the study of inorganic chemistry is about.
I’m not a chemist, but I disagree. You can study elements and discover their properties, such as whether they are metallic or not, but asking why boils down to asking why the physical laws are the way that they are. That is not a question that science can answer.
The physical laws just are the way that they are - unless you believe a god or some other entity defined them with a certain purpose, it does not make much sense to ask why they are like that.
That’s blatantly incorrect. The properties of metals is an emergent property that arises from how atoms interact with each other.
Dense network of bonds with a lot of electrons -> higher chance of absorbing incoming light of a particular wavelength -> electron gets excited to the precise energy level of the incoming light due to the dense network of molecular orbitals -> electrons releases the exact amount of energy absorbed when it falls back to ground level -> a photon with equal wavelength to the light that was absorbed is emitted -> we observe that as something being shiny.
There’s nothing fundamental about why metals are metallic - inorganic chemists don’t just spend their entire day looking at elements and categorizing them as metals or not. Their entire job is figuring out why metals are the way they are. If you want to debate about why quantum mechanics (which is what ultimately causes atoms to interact in a particular way) is the way it is, then sure, we don’t know that yet. But then you’d be talking about an entirely different topic than the one that was asked
I think either you’re misunderstanding me or you have a different philosophy about the kinds of questions science can answer than I do - which is fine, that’s my whole point.
You tried here to provide a kind of explanation, but I personally don’t see that as an answer to “why”. I mean you say it is because of a dense network of bonds with a lot of electrons. But I could just ask “okay, but why is there this dense network of bonds?”.
Then you could give me some additional “explanation” and I could again just ask “okay, but why is it like that?”. And I could keep asking why.
My point is that any explanation you give ultimately will boil down to something you observed to just be like that. At some point I’ll ask “okay but why” and you’ll have to just say “it just is like that” - science cannot give you an answer for “why” something is.
This isn’t a matter of just studying the laws of physics further. Even if you studied something more and got another explanation to something more fundamental, I could just ask “okay but why is it like that?” again.
Again, you may disagree that science can’t answer “why” - but that kinda just proves my point that the answer depends on your philosophy and conceptions around what science can and cannot answer.
I address this in the last sentence of my previous post.
To reiterate, your argument does not matter because if you keep asking why, you are no longer answering the question that is being asked, but an entirely different question altogether. You can answer why there are so many metals. We might not figure out why the laws of physics are the way they are, but if you’ve gotten to that point where you’re trying to answer that question, then you’ve deviated so far from the original question that you weren’t even trying to respond to it to begin with.
Well, again, I don’t agree that you can. I wouldn’t call that an answer to “why”. That’s okay, we can disagree. That doesn’t make my original answer wrong - just a different perspective.
You can answer why there are so many metals though. You’re conflating a different question
It’s like saying we can’t answer why something is flammable. Yes we can, you need a FAIR few more why’s to get to the philosophy part
Why is the sky blue? Why is water wet? Why does the sun shine? Why does water flow downhill? Fucking magnets, why do they work? We can never know! These are all questions that you too can easily prove that science will never answer, if you just boil them down enough that they lose all their flavour and turn into incomprehensible mush.
“Why” is a valid question until and only until you get to the edge of knowledge. At that point it’s “physical laws”.
For example, “Why is the sky blue?” is a valid question and has answers.
"Even seemingly impossible questions like, “Why is there magnetism.” can be answered by applying special relativity to electric fields. (Feynman answered this question poorly in the Horizon interview which might be where you got the idea that why is a bad question.)
You end up at, “Why are there photons?” which can’t be answered. (Or maybe can’t be answered yet.)
My interpretation of the question was why so many elements in the periodic table are metal and that does have an answer. It relates to the number of electrons on the outer shell that are mobile because the more electrons in an atom, the “farther” away they are and therefore are mobile. That electron mobility gives the element properties that we call “metal”.
I don’t disagree that that is a valid way to interpret the question. However, there were plenty of comments to answer that interpretation and I felt that an answer to the more fundamental interpretation could also be useful, for perspective.
I was just offering another viewpoint. Unfortunately that often results in downvotes. Oh well.