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Recent Posts Tagged With 'physics of conductors and insulators'
Introduction
By now you should be well aware of the correlation between electrical conductivity and certain types of materials. Those materials allowing for easy passage of free electrons are called conductors, while those materials impeding the passage of free ...
Conductor size
It should be common-sense knowledge that liquids flow through large-diameter pipes easier than they do through small-diameter pipes (if you would like a practical illustration, try drinking a liquid through straws of different diameters). The same g...
Conductor ampacity
The smaller the wire, the greater the resistance for any given length, all other factors being equal. A wire with greater resistance will dissipate a greater amount of heat energy for any given amount of current, the power being equal to P=I2R. D...
Fuses
Normally, the ampacity rating of a conductor is a circuit design limit never to be intentionally exceeded, but there is an application where ampacity exceedence is expected: in the case of fuses. A fuse is nothing more than a short length of wire...
Specific resistance
Conductor ampacity rating is a crude assessment of resistance based on the potential for current to create a fire hazard. However, we may come across situations where the voltage drop created by wire resistance in a circuit poses concerns other than...
Temperature coefficient of resistance
You might have noticed on the table for specific resistances that all figures were specified at a temperature of 20o Celsius. If you suspected that this meant specific resistance of a material may change with temperature, you were right! Resist...
Superconductivity
Conductors lose all of their electrical resistance when cooled to super-low temperatures (near absolute zero, about -273o Celsius). It must be understood that superconductivity is not merely an extrapolation of most conductors' tendency to gradually...
Insulator breakdown voltage
The atoms in insulating materials have very tightly-bound electrons, resisting free electron flow very well. However, insulators cannot resist indefinite amounts of voltage. With enough voltage applied, any insulating material will eventually succum...
