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Why can sodium and potassium be cut with a knife?

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Sodium and potassium crystallise in body centred cubic structure. In this ,unit cell consists of eight atoms at eight corners of cube and one atom at the centre of the cube. There is lot of empty space in the unit cell ,hence metallic bond is weaker. Thus sodium and potassium metals appear soft and can be cut with knife. read more

i) Alkali metals are placed at the extreme left of the periodic table. They belongs to group number I or IA. Alkali metals have large atomic size with only one valence electron. Terefore, they have weak metallic bonding between the atoms. Due to the presence of weak metallic bonding alkali metals are soft and can be cut with a knife. read more

All metals cannot be cut with knife. Only sodium, potassium and calcium can be cut with knife because they are soft in nature. read more

Not only then, even iron and titanium can be cut with a knife. Only thing is the knife has to be harder than the metal. Sodium and potassium are soft metals. So an ordinary knife and a little pressure is enough to cut them. read more

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