Electrical resistivity and conductivity

Electrical resistivity measures how strongly a material opposes electric current, while electrical conductivity measures how readily it carries current. They are reciprocal properties.

Ohm's law: A relation stating that current through a conductor is proportional to voltage across it when physical conditions remain constant. It links a specimen’s resistivity to the voltage and current measured across it.
Electric field: A vector field describing the electric force per unit positive charge at each point. Conductivity connects the electric field to the resulting current density.
Four-point probe: A measurement technique that uses four electrical contacts to determine a material’s sheet resistance or resistivity. It reduces contact-resistance errors when measuring resistivity.
Electrical insulator: A material in which electric charge moves only with great difficulty under ordinary conditions. Insulators have high resistivity and low conductivity relative to conductors.
Drude model: A classical model that describes electrical conduction in metals through moving electrons that scatter from obstacles. It explains resistivity through electron scattering and finite mean free paths.
Charge carrier: A mobile particle or quasiparticle that transports electric charge through a material. Resistivity depends on the available carriers and how readily they move.
Electrical resistivity tomography: An imaging method that reconstructs subsurface resistivity from electrical measurements at the surface. Spatial variations in resistivity reveal buried geological structures.
Electrical conductor: A material that permits electric charge to move readily under an applied electric field. Conductors occupy the low-resistivity, high-conductivity end of material behavior.
Electron mobility: The proportionality between a charge carrier’s drift velocity and the applied electric field. Carrier mobility helps determine conductivity alongside carrier concentration.
SI derived unit: A unit formed from combinations of the International System of Units’ base units. Resistivity uses ohm-metres, while conductivity uses siemens per metre.

Linked from 5 pages