Question

How do you work out the cross sectional area of a wire?

I need to calculate the resistivity of a wire at certain lengths.
I've calculated the resistance and found the diameter of the wire, so I'm guess that I just use pi x r^2, but my worksheet says to use 4/3 pi x r^3? Thanks!

Answer 1

for the xsectional area it's pi r squared. The other formula is for the volume of a cylinder. Which is what the wire is, a long cylinder. I can't remember the resistivity formula to hand,
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pi x r^2 is the formula for the cross sectional area of the wire.the other formula is for the volume of a cylinder. Though I can't remember the formula for resistivity off my noggin, the wire is, effectively, a long cylinder isn't it ???