Thin and Thick Wires

In this wiki page, you will learn about thin and thick wires and how they physically operate.

Wiki created by Ryan Keefe (rkeefe3)

The Big Picture

Let's start out by saying this: no matter how much the wire's thickness changes, if a wire has a current running through it, it will always have the same number of electrons passing through it every second. This value cannot change within the wire just because of thickness. What can change however is the magnitude of the electric field caused by the wire. Because the electric field due to a wire can be formulated by this:

[math]\displaystyle{ E(R)=\frac{lambda}/{2 pi epsilon_0 R} }[/math]

The

Zeroth Law

The zeroth law states that if two systems are at thermal equilibrium at the same time as a third system, then all of the systems are at equilibrium with each other. If systems A and C are in thermal equilibrium with B, then system A and C are also in thermal equilibrium with each other. There are underlying ideas of heat that are also important. The most prominent one is that all heat is of the same kind. As long as the systems are at thermal equilibrium, every unit of internal energy that passes from one system to the other is balanced by the same amount of energy passing back. This also applies when the two systems or objects have different atomic masses or material.