Consider a wire of length 4 m and cross-sectional area 1 mm2 carrying a current of 2 A. If each cubic meter of the material contains 1029 free electrons, find the average time taken by an electron to cross the length of the wire.
8.9 hours
Given,
Number of free electron per unit volume, n=1029
Area of cross-section, A=1 mm2=10-6 m2
Length of wire, l= 4m
Current through the wire, I=2A
Formula used
We know that the expression for drift velocity, Vd of ‘n’ free electrons through a wire of cross-sectional area A, for a current ‘i' is
Where e is the charge of 1 electron= 1.6×10-19 C
Vd can be expressed in terms of the travel length, l and travel time, t as,
Combining the above two expressions, we can write as,
Or,
Solution,
Substituting the given values in eqn.1, we get the time taken by the free electrons to cross the length as,
So the average time taken by an electron to cross the length of the wire is approximately 8.9 hours.