The effect of temperature on resistivity

Usually resistance depends on three things, the material, the length and the area. However, heat affects resistance, the higher the temperature the higher the resistance.

When you cool a certain material to the point where it reaches its critical temperature, it's resistance would equal zero. But if you increase its temperature, you'd give more energy to its atoms, thus increasing the number of collisions between them resulting in increasing the resistance.

The resistance of R of many metals is directly proportional to the temperature T in kelvin.
As Temperature increases, Resistivity increases, resistivity of the material increases and current decreases.

T ^, R ^, p ^, I v


A thermistor is a solid-state device, similar in many ways to an LED, but does not emit light. Usually made from silicon containing a small number of impurity atoms, it's resistance is highly temperature dependent, altering far more than that of any metal for a given change in temperature.

One widely used NTC thermistor has a resistance of 9000Ω at 0C and 240Ω at 100C

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