Thermal conductivity heat flow may not be exactly the same as the direction of the thermal gradient. In metals, thermal conductivity approximately tracks electrical conductivity according to the Wiedemann–Franz law, as freely moving valence electrons transfer not only electric current but also heat energy. However, the general correlation between electrical and thermal conductance does not hold for other materials, due to the increased importance of phonon carriers for heat in non-metals. Highly electrically conductive silver is less thermally conductive than diamond, which is an electrical insulator, but due to its orderly array of atoms it is conductive of heat via phonons. The
Thermal conductivity the molar volume. More rigorously, the mean free path of a molecule in a gas is given by formula_77 where "σ" is the collision cross section. So The heat capacity per particle "c" and the cross section "σ" both are temperature independent so the temperature dependence of "k" is determined by the "T" dependence of "v". For a monatomic gas, with atomic mass "M", "v" is given by formula_79 So This expression also shows why gases with a low mass (hydrogen, helium) have a high thermal conductivity. For metals at low temperatures the heat is carried mainly by the free