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A wire is a flexible, round bar of metal. Wires are commonly formed by drawing the metal through a hole in a die or draw plate. Wire gauges come in various standard sizes, as expressed in terms of a gauge number or cross-sectional area. Wires are used to bear mechanical loads, often in the form of wire rope.
Wires and cables are rated by the circuit voltage, temperature rating and environmental conditions (moisture, sunlight, oil, chemicals) in which they can be used. A wire or cable has a voltage (to neutral) rating and a maximum conductor surface temperature rating.
Famously, 14,700 short tons (13,300 t) of silver on loan from the United States Treasury were used in the making of the calutron magnets during World War II due to wartime shortages of copper. [4] Aluminum wire is the most common metal in electric power transmission and distribution. Although only 61% of the conductivity of copper by cross ...
Aluminum wire used before the mid-1970s had a somewhat higher rate of creep, but a more significant issue was that the same high price of copper driving the use of aluminum wire led to the use of brass-coated steel rather than solid brass screws for terminations at devices such as outlets and switches.
For power circuits, the color-coding uses the same colors as residential construction, and adds the additional wires used for three-phase systems. Black, Red and Blue are used for hot wires and White is used as the neutral wire in a 120/208 V circuit. Brown, Orange and Yellow are used as hot wires and gray is used as the neutral wire in a 277/ ...
Within a few years, the growing use of electricity again brought an increase of interference, so engineers devised a method called wire transposition, to cancel out the interference. In wire transposition, the wires exchange position once every several poles. In this way, the two wires would receive similar EMI from power lines.
This practice arose from the three-wire system used to supply both 120 volt and 240 volt loads. Because these listed appliances often have components that use either 120, or both 120 and 240 volts, there is often some current on the neutral wire. This differs from the protective grounding wire, which only carries current under fault conditions.
An electrical cable is an assembly of one or more wires running side by side or bundled, which is used as an electrical conductor to carry electric current. Electrical cables are used to connect two or more devices, enabling the transfer of electrical signals, power, or both from one device to the other. Physically, an electrical cable is an ...