Investigating How the Resistance of a Piece of Graphite Paper is Affected by the Width of the Graphite Paper

Investigating How the Resistance of a Piece of Graphite Paper is Affected by the Width of the Graphite Paper

Planning

I will be investigating how the resistance of a piece of graphite

paper is affected by the width of it. The aim of the investigation is

to carry out a suitable experiment to find various different

resistances for various different widths of graphite paper.

Preliminary Experiment

The purpose of the preliminary experiment is to find a suitable length

of graphite paper to use in the real experiment. For this experiment

we will be using a 0-1mA shunt as I think it will give the best

deflection. Ideally we wanted to find a length of graphite paper that

can allow the 0-1mA shunt to reach a reading near to or exactly 1mA.

Hence if we are going to do this we need a shunt that has the best

deflection for this kind of experiment and that shunt is a 0-1mA. The

circuit below is the circuit or series that I used in the preliminary

experiment and the one I will be using in the real experiment.

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[IMAGE]

A

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[IMAGE][IMAGE][IMAGE][IMAGE][IMAGE][IMAGE]Clips

V[IMAGE]Graphite Paper

[IMAGE][IMAGE] V

The Apparatus

Ø Battery

Ø Voltmeter

Ø Ammeter

Ø 0-1mA shunt

Ø Wires connecting apparatus

Ø Ruler

Ø Scissors

Ø Graphite paper

Ø Clips holding the graphite paper

The Method

Ø One followed the above diagram to attach all the wires to the

different pieces of apparatus.

Ø I attached the clips to each end of the graphite paper.

Ø I attached the 0-1mA shunt to the ammeter.

Ø I read from the ammeter each time I cut down the length by using

scissors. I did this till the ammeter got a reading near enough to

1mA.

Safety Precautions

Ø As I used scissors one should have handled them properly at all

times for one could have been cut by the blade.