Chemical Forums
Chemistry Forums for Students => Physical Chemistry Forum => Topic started by: Bcothm on February 10, 2022, 04:05:19 PM
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So for a project im working on as a part of my class i have chosen to work out why different pure elements have different resistivities. originally i thought it was down to their amount of valence electrons but since they all have 1 that couldnt be the reason. My next conclusion was that it was due to atomic size/amount of shells but that doesnt explain why sliver is a better conductor and has a lower resistivity than copper. My final conclusion was that it was down to the structure and amount of atoms in X amount of area. from my calculations i have not come to a conclusive answer as the amount of moles in 1 cm3 of copper, silver and gold came to 0.141 mols cm-3, 0.097 mols cm-3 and 0.098 mols cm-3. from that reasoning gold would have a better conductivity than copper and a lower resistivity but from other sources its shown to not.
If anyone has a reason as to why the resistivity goes from silver being the best then copper then gold being the worst please reply so that i can understand it better.
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I think you'll find that resistivity is too complicated to condense into such simple explanations.
You may quickly realize this after reading a bit about even the simpler models of conductivity in metallic solids, like the Drude (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drude_model) and free electron (http://free electron) models.
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I second that. Resistivity is complicated. Some models work not too badly, with adjustments and within a limited range. They explain what brakes the electrons: the temperature of the metal and its impurities.
No chance with simple values like electron numbers, molar volume or others.
Who accepted this topic for your project? You need an other one. Or maybe your project can review a dozen of attempted models to show that they are all wrong.
Wikipedia has lists of properties for the elements, like "conductivity of the elements", "molar volume of the elements" and so on. You could choose one or two dozens not-too-exotic metals, and show on graphs that no relationship exists.
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What class are we talking about? Enthlapy is right, resistivity is very complicated; however if this is for a high school physics class then clearly true rigor, that the subject of resistivity deserves, is not expected.