The Direction of Current Flow

The drift of moving charges through a conductor can be interpreted in terms of work and
energy.
S
The electric field E does work on the moving charges.

The resulting kinetic energy is transferred to the material of the conductor by means of
collisions with the ions

This energy transfer increases the average vibrational energy of the ions and therefore the
temperature of the material.

Thus much of the work done by the electric field goes into heating the conductor, not into
making the moving charges move ever faster and faster.

In different current-carrying materials, the charges of the moving particles may be

positive or negative.

In metals the moving charges are always (negative) electrons

In an ionized gas (plasma) or an ionic solution the moving charges may include both
electrons and positively charged ions.

In a semi-conductor material such as germanium or silicon, conduction is partly by

electrons and partly by motion of vacancies, also known as holes; these are sites of
missing electrons and act like positive charges

Current (I)

The SI unit of current is the ampere; one ampere is defined to be one coulomb per

In a current-carrying wire, the current is always along the length of the wire, regardless of
whether the wire is straight or curved. No single vector could describe motion along a curved
path, which is why current is not a vector. Well usually describe the direction of current either
in words (as in the current flows clockwise around the circuit) or by choosing a current to be
positive if it flows in one direction along a conductor and negative if it flows in the other
direction.
Resistivity and Temperature
The resistivity of a metallic conductor nearly always increases with increasing
temperature

As temperature increases, the ions of the conductor vibrate with greater amplitude,
making it more likely that a moving electron will collide with an

This impedes the drift of electrons through the conductor and hence reduces the current.

Over a small temperature range (up to 100 C or so), the resistivity of a metal can be
represented approximately by the equation

where 0 is the resistivity at a reference temperature T0,

(t) is the resistivity at temperature T, which may be higher or lower than T0.

The factor a is called the temperature coefficient of resistivity