Talk:Electrical conductor

Merge

 * Merge. Both articles are about the same thing, differs only in the scientific background. A chemical discuss about conductors (eletric an heat) shall be write also. Luan Carvalho Martins 16:50, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Done :) Dan 17:53, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Name change or merge
I was going to suggest that the name of the article be changed to "electrical conductor" because "conductor (material)" could also refer to conductors of heat and it would allow us to get rid of the parentheses. However, I found out there's an article called electrical conduction, which could cover electrical conductors. So should the article stay the same, have its name changed to "electrical conductor", or be merged into electrical conduction? -- Kjkolb 08:19, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Requested move
Conductor (material) → Electrical conductor – The article is about electrical conductors and has nothing about other conductors, like heat conductors. The name would be more accurate and would eliminate the need for the "(material)" disambiguation. -- Kjkolb 08:48, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * No opposition --> moved. &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) Seen this already? 15:52, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Namespace consistency with Insulator (Electrical)
I'm wondering if this article should be renamed (again?) in similar fashion to the Insulator article, which is named Insulator (electrical). If consistency is preferred between related articles, this article should be renamed Conductor (Electrical) or that article should be renamed Electrical insulator Cheers, 67.150.173.170 (talk) 07:17, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Oops, didn't realize I was logged out when I signed it. Re-signed: Mgmirkin (talk) 07:19, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Come to think of it, a similar argument would then be made for other articles like Semiconductor, etc. What are the implications? Is it acceptable to change several namespaces like that, to improve namespace consistency? (So long as redirects from the original namespaces are implemented, so people can still find the articles...) Mgmirkin (talk) 07:24, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

A more consistent approach might be to (re)create an article 'Electrical conduction' which starts by making clear the property that is referred to, for example 'Electrical conduction is that property of a material that allows electric current to pass through the material under the influence of an electro-motive force (EMF).' (Before anyone objects to EMF and wants to use 'voltage' remember that a current can pass through a conductor with no potential difference.) The article would then go on to describe the immense range of conductivity displayed by different materials and how materials naturally fall into classes called conductors and insulators distinguished by the fact that a poor conductor has a conductivity many orders of magnitude better than a poor insulator. Materials whose properties fall into that wide gap became known as semi-conductors. The theory which is thought to explain these differences would then be explained. Examples of each type of material and their uses would then follow. Appropriate redirection would be used to gather up the various relevant articles. The only disadvantage of this might be that the ensuing article would be quite lengthy, but it should be possible to handle that. Any thoughts? treesmill (talk) 08:17, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Conductor voltage
The voltage on a conductor is determined by the connected circuitry and has nothing to do with the conductor itself. Conductors are usually surrounded by and/or supported by insulators and the insulation determines the maximum voltage that can be applied to any given conductor.

The voltage V of a conductor is given by
 * $$V = IR \, ,$$

where I is the current (SI unit: ampere), V is the potential difference (SI unit: volt), and R is the resistance (SI unit: ohm).


 * I removed the above material for two reasons: (1) it is not clear what is meant by voltage *on* a conductor.  I suppose what this refers to is the voltage measured between the conductor and circuit common or ground but if so, it is hardly worth mentioning.  (2) This version of Ohm's law gives the voltage *across* a resistor so it's presence here is quite odd.  Sure, a real conductor will have a voltage across it that depends on it's length, resistance per unit length, and current through it but that's not explained here. Moreover, if there is a voltage drop across the conductor, the notion of a voltage *on* a conductor becomes even more ill defined.  I suggest just leaving all this out unless someone wants to give it a much more thorough treatment.

Introduction & Effect of Temperature
In the previous version of this article there wasn't a huge emphasis on the reasons why metals were the chosen material to use as conductors, so I attempted to elucidate that in the Introduction with a very rough description and link to the Drude model of conduction and how the sea of electrons characteristic of metals lends itself to conduction. Additionally, as conductivity and resistivity constants were discussed at length in the section preceding the discussion of materials, I thought it might be useful to quote those values for silver, copper, and aluminum, to show how these values factor into the decisions to use which material, so I added in a table quoting these values underneath the 'Conductor materials' section. Lastly, there was no mention on the page on the effect that temperature has on conductors aside from a brief mention of the thermal expansion coefficient. I included a paragraph talking a bit more (in general terms) about the thermal expansion coefficient, and included a mention of phonons, their effect on the electron flow, and how the scattering increases with temperature. 09:06 AM, 08 December 2016

Main explained in about mains and rules
Why there is not been contain about the all ways of including a conductors in a electric which always been setting up the all electrical rules?--Alex Sazonov (talk) 07:47, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

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