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At 14:59 2/9/99 -0800, you wrote:his
For years I've been telling my students what someone told me when I was a
student, that gold is the best conductor, followed by silver, then copper.
Well, a student showed me a table of resistivities of various metals in
text (Serway, 4th ed., p 777) and, low and behold, the order is silver,
copper, then gold. Could it be that this is the order in their PURE form,
but that the resistivity changes significantly due to surface corrosion so
that in practice gold wins? If I remember my chemistry, gold is not as
reactive as silver or copper.
P. Goodman
Some values for the pure materials:
Cu 1.7E-8 ohm.meters (for comparison 70:30 brass abt 8E-8)
Ag 1.6E-8 (strong alloy 5E-8)
Au 2.4E-8
Al 2.65E-8