2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/164484A unified treatment of the cohesive and conducting properties of metallic nanostructures in terms of the electronic scattering matrix is developed. A simple picture of metallic nanocohesion in which conductance channels act as delocalized chemical bonds is derived in the jellium approximation. Universal force oscillations of order epsilon_F/lambda_F are predicted when a metallic quantum wire is stretched to the breaking point, which are synchronized with quantized jumps in the conductance.7 pages, Latex, 3 figures, to be published in Phys.Rev.LettMesoscale and Nanoscale Physicstext