Factors Affecting the Resistance of Wire

Authors Avatar

Factors Affecting the Resistance of Wire

Aim

To find the factors affecting the resistance of wire.

Factors affecting the resistance of wire

Temperature: If the wire is heated up the atoms in the wire will start to vibrate because of their increase in energy. This causes more collisions between the electrons and the atoms as the atoms are moving into the path of the electrons. This increase in collisions means that there will be an increase in resistance.

Type of Wire: The type of wire will affect the amount of free electrons, which are able to flow. The number of electrons depends on the amount of electrons in the outer energy shell of the atoms, so if there are more or larger atoms then there must be more electrons available. If the material has a high number of atoms there will be high number of electrons causing a lower resistance because of the increase in the number of electrons. Also if the atoms in the wire are closely packed then the electrons will have more frequent collisions and the resistance will increase.

Wire length: If the length of the wire is increased then the resistance will also increase as the electrons will have a longer distance to travel and so more collisions will occur. Due to this the length increase should be proportional to the resistance increase.

Wire width: If the wires width is increased the resistance will decrease. This is because of the increase in the space for the electrons to travel through. Due to this increased space between the atoms there should be less collisions.

Join now!

To choose which factor I am going to investigate I am going to consider how I would measure each factor and which factor would be the best and easiest to record. To measure the wire width I would use different widths of the same length and same material of wire e.g. thin, medium and thick copper wire with thin and thick constant in wire. To record the difference in widths I would use the same voltage and measure the resistance for each thickness. Although it would be easy to obtain and record the data the graphs that I would ...

This is a preview of the whole essay