Question

how does the change in temperature affect the electrical conductivity of copper sulphate?

Answer 1

Copper has a fairly high conductivity at room temperature(5.98*10^7 S/m) . This is because of the large number of valence electrons which are free to move in the lattice.But as the temperature increases, the atomic vibrations increases,which will cause more collision of the electrons with crystal lattice resulting in decrease of drift velocity.Thus,the electrical conductivity will decrease with increase in temperature.Copper is a metal whose conductivity mostly depends upon the flow of electrons as compare to lattice vibration within the copper and this is the main cause of thermal conductivity of metals, but as we increase the temperature of Copper, lattice vibration increases which create hindrance in the path of electron due to which energy carrying by the electrons will get decreases and hence thermal conductivity of copper and other pure metals decreases on increasing the temperature.