Question Video: Determining the Behaviour of a Circuit with a Large Current through It Science • Third Year of Preparatory School

Video Transcript

Which of the following sentences describes what will happen to a wire in a circuit if a very large current is passed through it? (A) The wire will heat up. (B) The wire will cool down. (C) The wire will neither heat up nor cool down.

Alright, let’s say that we have a battery. Actually, let’s make that a gigantic battery. And say we decide to take a bit of conducting wire, and we connect up the ends of this battery. What will happen is charge will flow through the wire, lots of charge. As these charges move though, they will run into particles in the wire. This causes a transfer of energy from the moving charges to the wire. The result is that the temperature of the wire goes up. Option (A) is the correct answer choice. With all those moving charges in a very large current interacting with particles in the wire, energy is transferred to the wire, and it heats up.