Investigate the effect the "resistance of a wire" by using different lengths.

Preliminary Investigation.

Aim - To investigate the effect the “resistance of a wire” by using different lengths.

Hypothesis - The longer the length of the wire the higher the resistance because of the electrons inside the wire having to travel for a longer distance, which causes more collisions and so increases the resistance.

Prediction - I that if the length increases then the resistance will also increase in proportion to the length. Causing the length of the wire to be directly proportional to its resistance. This is because there are more atoms in a long wire, so there is more chance that the electrons would collide with each other; therefore there is more frequent collisions. So if the length is doubled the resistance should also double resulting in twice the number of collisions slowing the electrons down and increasing the resistance. I have drawn this below:

The diagram at the shows 2 wires, the top one is only half the length of the bottom wire, there should be half the number of collisions between the electrons and the atoms but the wire under it is twice the length so it should be twice the number of atoms resulting in the twice as many collisions and the predicted doubling og the resistance.

Apparatus -

For me to be able to test the effect of the length on the resistance of a wire successfully, I will need to use the following: