3-1 Electric Current
As Fig. (a) reminds us, any isolated conducting loop—
regardless of whether it has an excess charge — is all at
the same potential. No electric field can exist within it or
along its surface.
If we insert a battery in the loop, as in Fig. (b), the
conducting loop is no longer at a single potential. Electric
fields act inside the material making up the loop, exerting
forces on internal charges, causing them to move and thus
establishing a current. (The diagram assumes the motion
of positive charges moving clockwise.)
Figure c shows a section of a conductor, part of a
conducting loop in which current has been established. If
charge dq passes through a hypothetical plane (such as
aa’) in time dt, then the current i through that plane is
defined as
(c)
3-1 Electric Current
Figure (a) shows a conductor with current i0 splitting
at a junction into two branches. Because charge is
conserved, the magnitudes of the currents in the
branches must add to yield the magnitude of the current
in the original conductor, so that
Figure (b) suggests, bending or reorienting the wires in
space does not change the validity of the above equation
Current arrows show only a direction (or sense) of flow
along a conductor, not a direction in space.
Answer:
3-2 Current Density
Current i (a scalar quantity) is related to current density J (a vector
quantity) by
where dA is a vector perpendicular to a surface element of area dA and the
integral is taken over any surface cutting across the conductor. The current
density J has the same direction as the velocity of the moving charges if
they are positive charges and the opposite direction if the moving charges
are negative.
Streamlines representing
current density in the flow
of charge through a
constricted conductor.
3-2 Current Density
Conduction
electrons are
actually moving
to the right but
the conventional
current i is said to
move to the left.
Current is said to be due to positive charges that are propelled by the electric
field. In the figure, positive charge carriers drift at speed vd in the direction of
the applied electric field E which here is applied to the left. By convention, the
direction of the current density J and the sense of the current arrow are drawn
in that same direction, as is the drift speed vd.
The drift velocity vd is related to the current density by
Here the product ne, whose SI unit is the coulomb per cubic meter (C/m3), is
the carrier charge density.
3-3 Resistance and Resistivity
If we apply the same potential difference between the ends of geometrically similar
rods of copper and of glass, very different currents result. The characteristic of the
conductor that enters here is its electrical resistance. The resistance R of a
conductor is defined as
where V is the potential difference across the conductor and i is the current through
the conductor. Instead of the resistance R of an object, we may deal with the
resistivity ρ of the material:
The reciprocal of resistivity is conductivity σ of the
material:
Assortment of Resistors
3-3 Resistance and Resistivity
The resistance R of a conducting wire of length L and uniform cross section is
Here A is the cross-sectional area.
A potential difference V is applied
The resistivity ρ for most materials changes with between the ends of a wire of
temperature. For many materials, including metals, length L and cross section A,
the relation between ρ and temperature T is establishing a current i.
approximated by the equation
Here T0 is a reference temperature, ρ0 is the
resistivity at T0, and α is the temperature coefficient
of resistivity for the material. The resistivity of copper as a
function of temperature.
3-4 Ohm’s Law
Figure (a) shows how to distinguish among devices. A
potential difference V is applied across the device being
tested, and the resulting current i through the device is
measured as V is varied in both magnitude and polarity.
Figure (b) is a plot of i versus V for one device. This plot
is a straight line passing through the origin, so the ratio
i/V (which is the slope of the straight line) is the same for
all values of V. This means that the resistance R = V/i of
the device is independent of the magnitude and polarity
of the applied potential difference V.
Figure (c) is a plot for another conducting device. Current
can exist in this device only when the polarity of V is
positive, and the applied potential difference is more than
about 1.5 V. When current does exist, the relation
between i and V is not linear; it depends on the value of
the applied potential difference V.
3-4 Ohm’s Law
I~V or I = V/R
Answer: Device 2 does not follow ohm’s law.
3-4 Ohm’s Law
A Microscopic View
The assumption that the conduction electrons in
a metal are free to move like the molecules in a
gas leads to an expression for the resistivity of a
metal:
Here n is the number of free electrons per unit
volume and τ is the mean time between the
collisions of an electron with the atoms of the
metal. The gray lines show an electron
moving from A to B, making six
Metals obey Ohm’s law because the mean free collisions en route. The green
time τ is approximately independent of the lines show what the electron’s
path might be in the presence of
magnitude E of any electric field applied to a
an applied electric field E. Note
metal. the steady drift in the direction
of -E.
3-5 Power, Semiconductors, Superconductors
Figure shows a circuit consisting of a battery B that is connected
by wires, which we assume have negligible resistance, to an
unspecified conducting device. The device might be a resistor, a
storage battery (a rechargeable battery), a motor, or some other
electrical device. The battery maintains a potential difference of
magnitude V across its own terminals and thus (because of the
wires) across the terminals of the unspecified device, with a
greater potential at terminal a of the device than at terminal b.
The power P, or rate of energy transfer, in an electrical device
across which a potential difference V is maintained is
If the device is a resistor, the power can also be written as
or,
3-5 Power, Semiconductors, Superconductors
Semiconductors are materials that have few conduction electrons but can become
conductors when they are doped with other atoms that contribute charge carriers.
In a semiconductor, n (number of free
electrons) is small (unlike conductor) but
increases very rapidly with temperature as
the increased thermal agitation makes
more charge carriers available. This
causes a decrease of resistivity with
increasing temperature, as indicated
by the negative temperature coefficient
of resistivity for silicon in Table 26-2.
Superconductors are materials that lose all electrical
resistance below some critical temperature. Most of
such materials require very low temperatures, but
some become superconducting at temperatures as
high as room temperature. The resistance of mercury drops to
zero at a temperature of about 4 K.
