The Resistance of a Wire

The Resistance of a Wire

Introduction:

In this piece of coursework, I have been finding out factors that

affect the resistance of a wire. Firstly, I will explain how

resistance works. Resistance is when electrons in a wire collide with

atoms also in the wire. When the electrons and the atoms collide the

electrons start to move slower, which then causes resistance. So,

resistance is how hard it is to move electrons through a wire.

Now, I am going to tell you what are the factors of wire resistance.

Number one, temperature is a factor. If the wire is heated, then the

atoms will move around more because there will be a rise in energy.

This is good because it will cause more collisions between the atoms

and the electrons. The increase in collisions would obviously cause

the resistance to rise.

Secondly, the length of the wire is a factor. The longer the wire, the

longer it will take electrons to get to the end of the wire. This is

because there will be more collisions between electrons and atoms. So,

the length of the wire should be directly measured to the resistance

if not then there will be fewer collisions.

This would be very easy to do, and give accurate results. Because of

the length being measured to the resistance, I could find the length

of the wire with the resistance of the wire, which would make my graph

more effective.

Due to the effectiveness of this way, I have agreed to use the length

of the wire as the factor because I think it will be most accurate and

easier for me.

Prediction:

I predict that, the longer the wire is, the more resistance there will

be due to more collisions between the electrons and atoms. The length

of the wire should be the same as the resistance. If the wire is

doubled, then so will the resistance. If the length is twice as much,

then there will be twice as much collision, which would increase the