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Electricity

The Heating Effect of Current.

When we looked at Ohm's Law,
it was mentioned that a component usually gets hotter
when a current flows through it.

The wires which link the components of a circuit
also get hotter with increasing current.
The more current passing through the wire, the hotter it gets.

A very hot wire might melt or set fire to the insulation which covers it.
A fuse is a thin piece of wire which is manufactured to melt
when a certain current (called its rating) passes through it.
In this way the fuse protects the rest of the circuit
from the damage caused by too high a current.

To find the reason why current has a heating effect,
we must look at the resistance of the wire itself.

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