Recent content by ABarrows

Well, we figured it out (just in case anyone is curious). Turns out it is Manganin, not Nichrome--we used an ohmmeter to measure actual resistances for various lengths, applying the R=ρL/A relationship directly without running current through it (as the students do for the experiment), and we...

I considered that it just might have a low value, but everything I've been able to find says Nichrome's resistivity varies from 1.0 x 10^-6 to 1.5 X 10^-6, so I doubt there's a composition variety with 0.5 x 10^-6 as its resistivity. And no, I'm not 100% certain it's Nichrome, but I have no...

Every year we do an experiment to find the resistivity of Nichrome wire, and every year the result is the same: 5 x 10^-7 instead of 1 x 10^-6. For the life of me I haven't been able to track down why it's a factor of 2 off. We use a Wheatstone bridge that has a 1 m length Nichrome wire...