Encyclopedia > Electrical conductivity

  Article Content

Electrical conductivity

Electrical conductivity is a measure of how well a material accommodates the transport of electric charge. Conductance is an electrical phenomenon where a material contains movable particles of electricity. When a difference of electrical potential is placed across a conductor, its movable charges flow, and an electric current appears.

A conductor such as a metal has high conductivity, and an insulator like glass, or the vacuum, has low conductivity. A semiconductor has a conductivity that may vary with conditions, such as exposure of the material to certain frequencies of light.

Electrical conductivity is the reciprocal of electrical resistivity (ohms). Its SI derived unit is the siemens (named after Werner von Siemens) per meter (A2s3m-3kg-1). It is the ratio of the current density to the electric field strength. This applies also to the electrolytic conductivity of a fluid.

See also: electrical conduction



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
1904

... dancer (+ 1979) April 7 - Ralph Bunche[?], diplomat, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize April 16 - Fifi D'Orsay, actress (+ 1983) April 22 - Robert Oppenheimer, ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 33.3 ms