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The ampacity of a conductor depends on its ability to dissipate heat without damage to the conductor or its insulation. This is a function of the insulation temperature rating, the electrical resistance of the conductor material, the ambient temperature, and the ability of the insulated conductor to dissipate heat to the surroundings.
In AC circuits, a current transformer can be used to convert the large current in the main circuit into a smaller current more suited to a meter. Some designs of transformer are able to directly convert the magnetic field around a conductor into a small AC current, typically either 1 A or 5 A at full rated current, that can be easily read by a ...
An electrical meter with integral AC current clamp is known as a clamp meter, clamp-on ammeter, tong tester, or colloquially as an amp clamp. A clamp meter measures the vector sum of the currents flowing in all the conductors passing through the probe, which depends on the phase relationship of the currents. Only one conductor is normally ...
Each notch is stamped with a number, and the wire or sheet, which just fits a given notch, is stated to be of, say, No. 10, 11, 12, etc., of the wire gauge. The circular forms of wire gauge measurement devices are the most popular, and are generally 3 + 3 ⁄ 4 inches (95 mm) in diameter, with thirty-six notches; many have the decimal ...
where E is the electric field vector with units of volts per meter (analogous to V of Ohm's law which has units of volts), J is the current density vector with units of amperes per unit area (analogous to I of Ohm's law which has units of amperes), and ρ "rho" is the resistivity with units of ohm·meters (analogous to R of Ohm's law which has ...
For wire sizes smaller than AWG No. 2 (33.6 mm 2, 0.0521 sq in), this term is also generally regarded as insignificant. R c , a {\textstyle R_{c,a}} is the effective thermal resistance between the conductor and the ambient conditions, which can require significant empirical or theoretical effort to estimate.
(E.g. 1 mm diameter wire is ~18 AWG, 2 mm diameter wire is ~12 AWG, and 4 mm diameter wire is ~6 AWG). This quadruples the cross-sectional area and conductance. A decrease of ten gauge numbers (E.g. from 12 AWG to 2 AWG) multiplies the area and weight by approximately 10, and reduces the electrical resistance (and increases the conductance ) by ...
For instance, instead of 14 AWG (American wire gauge) copper wire, aluminium wiring would need to be 12 AWG on a typical 15 ampere lighting circuit, though local building codes vary. Solid aluminium conductors were originally made in the 1960s from a utility-grade aluminium alloy that had undesirable properties for a building wire, and were ...