what really causes heat when you pass electricity thru a conductor?

Question

is it because the agitated electrons somehow produce IR or something????

i know theres resistance...but my question is what accounts for the heat...like is there something burning(thats very unlikely) or something???

Answer 1

The agitated electrons vibrate more and more the longer the current is flowing, this generates heat (which is normally unwanted as it lowers efficiency.)

Answer 2

There seems to be a lot of confusion here about this.

Electricity is a flow of electrons (nuclei are big, bulky and stay relatively fixed when an electric field is applied - its the electrons that move). Resistance is a resistance to that flow. It occurs because the moving electrons transfer some of their energy to the nuclei - or strictly to the lattice that the niclei form. This transfer of energy leads to lattice vinrations which is what heat is.

Now there is an easy and a hard answer as to how this transfer happens. The easy way is to just say electrons hit nuclei and bang there is some energy transfer. However, reality is not that simple.

In fact it goes right down to the reason an electron can get through a lattice at all without hitting one of the gazillions of nuclei (ie why anything conducts) and why some materials conduct and others do not. The explanation of this is quantum mechanical and relies on the fact that electrons behave like waves, and so can "diffract" through the lattice. In the same way vibrations of the lattice are waves and do the same as what are called phonons. The heating effect is the result of electronpphonon processes.

Answer 3

The resistance of the wire to current flow causes the wire to heat up and consequently raises the temperature of the conductor.The increased energy level of the electrons causes an increase in there agitation and thus an increase in resistance to current flow.

Answer 4

You know it is due to resistance. Now, what does restance do, it obstructs the flow of current i.e electrons. So, the elctrons vibrate and due to collision heat is produced. The heat produced both depends on the resistance and current flow. But it is proportional to the resistance and also proportional to the square of the current. The heat generated is I^2Rt. where t is the time of current flow.

Answer 5

Heat is the wave form of electron. When there is enough surface area of cross section for electrons to travel along a conductor, they travel as particles. But when the potential difference increases between terminals as well as the insufficient surface area for the electrons to travel as such, they transform into wave form i.e. quanta, as per the Einsteinian E = mC^2. We call it heat because our sense interprets it in the form of again particulate electrons into our body, which agitate the neuronal metabolism in accelerating the subcellular substances.

Answer 6

The heat is generated in the conductor because of it's resistance to the current flow. All those electrons jumping from molecule to molecule of the substrate(conductor) causes the resistance. ;-)=