To investigate how the length and area of wire affects its resistance.

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To investigate how the length and area of wire affects its resistance.

Abstract:

Aim:

To investigate how the length and the area of a wire affects its resistance.

Apparatus: 1 200cm ruler, 10 leads, 1 battery pack, 5 pieces of constantan wire 210cm long, 1 amp metre, 1 Volt metre, tape, scissors.

Method:

First we stretched the wire tight and taped it to the 200cm ruler with equal amounts of wire hanging over each end of the ruler then attach the crocodile clips at points 0cm and 200cm on the ruler, then we put our ammeter in our circuit and our voltmeter then we took each set of results three times to take an overall average so that we can try and eliminate experimental errors.

Variables: The length of the wire, the area of the wire how much voltage is passed through the wire, Types of wire?

Prediction: For length of wire,

I predict that the longer the wire the bigger the resistance.

Scientific Knowledge:

The resistance of a longer piece of wire is greater than that of a shorter wire. This is because the electrons have further to travel in a longer piece and this means they are more likely to collide with the positive ions, therefore if the electrons collide with the ion they will be slowed down considerably because they will have lost some of there energy as some of it's energy has been transferred to the ion in the collision.
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Predicted Graph:

1R

Prediction: For the area of wire,

I predict that the more area of the wire there is the less resistance there will be.

Scientific Knowledge:

The resistance of a thicker wire is less than that of a thinner wire because there are more routes for the to travel in a thick because bigger spaces between the positive ions, this gives a lower collision rate between the electrons and the positive ions. This means more electrons can travel through the wire, and this increases the flow. The more the current, ...

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