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Conductors and Conductivity
What's a conductor? Conductors have the quality of conductivity. That's not a lot of help for you. The reality is that you just need to understand the difference between those two words. The conductor is the object that allows electricity to flow. Conductivity is a quality related to the conductor. A material that is a good conductor gives very little resistance to the flow of an electric current. A good conductor has high conductivity. Conductors are classified in four ways.
Different Types of Conductors
(1) Metallic conductors are traditional conducting materials. You see them around the house all of the time. It's a metal wire or one of the metal prongs in an electric plug. There are a lot of free electrons in metallic conductors. Those electrons are really good at carrying the flowing current. Some of the best metallic conductors are copper (Cu), silver (Ag), and gold (Au).
(2) You've probably seen ionic conductors in a lab or in an experiment. When you think about ionic conductors, think about solutions and molten conductors. A solution such as saltwater has a lot of free ions floating around. Those ions carry any current very well. Ionic solutions are one of the reasons you need to get out of the water if there is lightning around. If lightning hits the liquid (solution), it might conduct electricity long distances and electrocute you.
(3) Semi-conductors are the conductors that make your computer possible. If it weren't for semi-conductors, most electronic doodads couldn't be made. There are free electrons that can carry electric current in semi-conductors. There aren't as many as in other conductors, so they are classified as having low conductivity. When we said they were used in electronics, we meant elements like silicon (Si) and germanium (Ge).
(4) You might not think of insulators as conductors, but they are. Insulators are just super bad conductors. They allow little or no current to flow through the material. In the real world, things like glass, paper, or plastic are really good insulators. Insulators do not have a lot of free electrons to help carry the current. Remember, the more free electrons a substance has, the better a conductor it will be.
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