Investigating what Factors Effect the Resistance of a Wire.

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Investigating what Factors Effect the Resistance of a Wire.

For this investigation I am going to investigate a factor which effects resistance of a wire.

Resistance is measured in ohms (Ω). It is a measure of how hard it is to move current through a component, it occurs when electrons travelling along the wire collides with the atoms of the wire.

To choose a factor to measure I will make a list of the factors I could investigate and decide which one is best for me to investigate.

  1. Material – The type of material will effect the type of atom in the wire, which consequently dictates the number of free electrons.

      I will not investigate this factor because, although recording results would be simple, no graph could be drawn, from which a connection could be made.

  1. Temperature – If the wire is heated the atoms will have an increase in energy, This will cause more collisions.

I wont investigate this factor either as it would be extremely hard to carry this out as a fair test, as it would be very difficult to control the temperature of the wire.

  1. Wire width- if the wire width is increases then there will be more room for the free electrons to go through the wire. I will not investigate this factor either, as the graphs I would be able to draw up would be uninteresting and irrelevant.  

  1. Wire Length- if the length of the wire increases so will the distance the electrons will have to travel, so there will be more collisions. I have chosen to investigate this factor because the graphs I will be able to draw from good results should be interesting, and to gain good results should be quite simple.
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Prediction

 We know that resistance is proportional to the length of a wire using the formula:

Resistance = Resistivity X Length 

                 Cross sectional Area

I predict that if the length increases then the resistance will also increase. I think this because the longer the wire the more atoms the electrons will collide with. From this I also think that the resistance will increase in direct proportion to the length of the wire, so if the length is doubled, so will the resistance.  This is because if the length is doubled so will the number ...

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