How/Why do Metals form a sea of electrons

In metals, how and why exactly do the valence electrons of metal atoms become delocalised to form a sea of electrons?

My general thinking is that... Essentially, the metal particles have so many electrons that they are each willing to share out their valance electrons. The electrons sort of floats outside of the metal atoms itself and together, creates this big sea of negative delocalised electrons, which subsequently makes the remaining atoms themselves become positively charged ions and attracted to that sea.

However, this I would imagine is very in-accurate and in-precise.

Thank you very much, please leave any resources you used just so I can also read up about it

Metallic bonding is not a simple phenomenon. To properly understand it you need to understand molecular orbital theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_o… --- this article is relatively short and not too instructive since it assumes you already know quite a bit of advanced chemistry).

However, reading the sections of the Wikipedia article on metallic bonds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallic_bo… titled "Delocalization" and "Electron deficiency and mobility" may help you to understand the "sea of electrons" better.

Until recently we presumed that the particles in metals have some kind of order, which alows electrons to "float" there, in between. I have heard that it seems that it's not accurate, there's no such a thing as a particular form which repeats itself. It's an interesting question, what you ask, and I will love to read some more myself about it when I have more time (:

There is nothing wrong with your description and it could help someone who is first learning about metals. (It would explain electrical conductivity, for example.) Wiki has a longer article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallic_bo…