Is it possible to do a lewis dot structure for a metal such as gold or aluminum?

For example, would "Al [three dots] Al" be correct since aluminum is content with 6 valence electrons instead of the usual 8 (octet rule). How would you do gold or copper?

My son's teacher has asked him to draw a lewis dot structure for a metal.

Thanks!

By the way, the answer was that you cannot do Lewis dot structures for metals. The chemistry teacher said she made a mistake in asking for this. And Aluminum does not bond with aluminum.

Is it possible to do a Lewis dot structure for a metal such as gold or aluminum?

For example, would "Al [three dots] Al" be correct since aluminum is content with 6 valence electrons instead of the usual 8 (octet rule). How would you do gold or copper?

My son's teacher has asked him to draw a lewis dot structure for a metal.
\

You can't simply draw a Lewis dot structure for a metal, you have to know the metal. In the case of copper, the electron from the "s" shell is moved to fill the "d" shell, so there is only one electron in the "s" shell. One would simply write:

Cu·

If you had a pair of coppers, you would write Cu:Cu

Gold is essentially the same.

(Parenthetically, Lewis dot structures are not particularly useful for most transition metals.)

Oh, and it's not correct that aluminum won't bond with aluminum. If you see an aluminum can or other part made with aluminum, the aluminum atoms are definitely bonded together as can be seen using x-ray diffraction. Usually, in metals, they consider the valence band the "conduction band" as electrons move freely from atom to atom.

Thanks! How would you describe the bond between individual atoms in aluminum (the solid/can)? What kind of bond is that?

Do you meant conduction "bond" or "band"?

It's called the "conduction band". It refers to the energy band where the electrons exist and can be pushed around by a voltage.

The metal-metal bond in aluminum and other metals is usually simply described as a "metallic bond". It is a type of covalent bond.

Thanks very much!

I disagree, metallic bonding is not covalent-like, so I find that the usefulness of Lewis structures (really awesome when applied to molecules) is totally poor at describing the metallic behavior. For instance, Al-Al are not found isolated, but in structures much better described by other models like the conduction band. So I would not recommend the use of Lewis structures for molecules containing metals, even for complexes coordinating metals with covalent structures.