Past exam of the chemistry A course of the University of Cambridge / 2021 / Paper 2 / A9 / a / ii

Metallic atomic densities place very many electrons in a small volume. The Pauli exclusion principle prevents all these fermions occupying the lowest spatial state, so filling the available states produces a Fermi energy of order electronvolts. At room temperature, $k_{\mathrm{B}}T\simeq 0.026\mathrm{eV}$, much smaller than that scale. Equivalently, ordinary metals are at $T\ll T_F=E_F/k_{\mathrm{B}}$, where $T_F$ is the Fermi temperature. Their electrons are quantum degenerate even at ordinary laboratory temperatures.