Re: All that glisters is not gold

[Tom McCarthy <TMccarthy@STEDS.ORG>]

In a similar vein, I have read that statistically, an atom of Ag has 1+
electrons that are easily displaced by an external E-field, while Cu's value
is more like 0.9 electrons.  How does this relate to resistivity?
Tom McCarthy
Saint Edward's School
1895 St. Edward's Drive
Vero Beach, FL  32963
561-231-4136
Physics and Astronomy
-----Original Message-----
From: brian whatcott <inet@INTELLISYS.NET>
To: PHYS-L@LISTS.NAU.EDU <PHYS-L@LISTS.NAU.EDU>
Date: Tuesday, February 09, 1999 6:58 PM
Subject: Re: All that glisters is not gold


> At 14:59 2/9/99 -0800, you wrote:
> > 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
his
> > 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