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Investigation of the factors affecting the resistance of a piece of wire.

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Introduction

Investigation of the factors affecting the resistance of a piece of wire

Plan:

Resistance is when the electrons travelling through the wire collide with the atoms of the wire.
These collisions slow down the flow of electrons causing resistance. Resistance is a measure of how hard it is to move the electrons through the wire.

I am supposed to investigate one factor which will affect the amount of resistance occurring in a circuit. In order to decide which factor I will investigate I am going to consider how easily I can gather results for each one and how that certain factor affects the rate of resistance.

The first factor I have chosen is Wire width. If you increase the width of the wire, the rate of resistance will decrease because there’s an increased area for the electrons to travel through to, due to this space there should be less collisions with the atoms of the wire.

To measure the wire width I would use different widths (in SWG) of the same length and same material of wire. In order to find out the widths I’d have to convert the SWG into mm.

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Middle

Analysis:

The only change I made to my original plan was to use a power pack instead of a cell. The power pack was providing 3 volts.

Results:

Length(cm)

Voltage(V)Volts

 Current(I)Amps

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Conclusion

Evaluation:

If I was going to repeat the experiment instead of connecting the voltmeter to the main circuit I would connect it to the piece wire which was being tested directly. I would do this so that the voltmeter is measuring the voltage of just the piece of wire being tested and not the whole circuit aswell.
The second change I would make would be to use pointers instead of putting crocodile clips on top. I would do this because pointers would be more accurate. The pointers would be more accurate because the tips have a much smaller area than the crocodile clips giving a more accurate measurement of the length of wire.
If I had more time I would repeat this experiment with different SWGs of wire.

...read more.

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