Why do metals display metallic bonding while non-metals do not?
The molecular orbital model is useful for describing properties of metals. Metals have multiple orbital levels (spdf) that smaller atoms (O) don’t have. Metal crystals can be viewed as “supermolecules” held together by delocalized bonds formed from the atomic orbitals of all the atoms in the crystal. Electrons are shared by all the metal nuclei in the crystal where non-metals may share electrons only with a single atomic atom.
