Electrical – measuring resistivity of copper wire

copperresistancewire

I have a power supply, multimeter, and a copper wire with cross sectional area (A) A= 2.14*10^-3 m^2, Length L = 0.13 m and the resistivity of copper is p=1.7 × 10-8. The goal is to find the resistance of my copper wire, but I'm not sure what other instruments I need to determine the resistance, or how to setup the circuit to find out the resistance. After using the resistance equation, I found that the resistance should be about 1*10^-6 (ohms), but I cant get close to that answer.
How should the circuit be setup?

Best Answer

As MKEITH said, copper has a temperature coefficient; its 0.4%, or 4,000 ppm, per degree Centigrade.

Copper, as with other materials has a thermal timeconstant (or, when inverted, a parameter named thermal-diffusivity).

For a cubic meter of copper, the time constant is 9,600 seconds (about 3 hours).

For 10cm cube (4" on a side), the time constant is 100X faster or 96 seconds.

For 1cm cube, the time constant is another 100X faster, or 0.96 seconds.

For 1mm cube, Tau is another 100X faster, or 0.0096 seconds.

Thus measurement has be made extremely quickly, or the temperature rise must be very small.