Posted by Steve Simon on January 19, 2013, 7:09 pm, in reply to "Re: Temperature"
Sorry for my slow reply Lady and Gaga. Yes, I agree with Lady's reasoning.
The electrons have a Fermi energy even in their ground state at T=0. The Fermi temperature TF = EF/kb is very high for a metal, but this does not mean that the electrons are at a high temperature.
One way to understand why a metal does not feel hot (despite the fact that the electrons have a high energy) is to realize that when you touch the metal, (if we are considering a Fermi sea at T=0) the electrons cannot transfer any energy to you since they are already in their lowest energy state.
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