Eli5: Why is it that there are multiple copper wires inside an electric cable and why are they coiled?
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It’s good to have a thick wire, so electric current can easily flow through it. But if it was just a solid chunk of copper, it wouldn’t bend easily.
Putting multiple copper wires in close proximity makes the cable easy to bend while also letting a lot of current through.
In addition to the other explanations, twisting pairs of wires can help eliminate interference when the wire is intended to transmit data. If you encode data as the raw voltage value on a single wire, external electric and/or magnetic activity near the wire can affect this voltage by inducing or cancelling some of the current. But if you instead encode the data as the difference in the voltages of two twisted wires, the pair will both experience more or less alteration of their signal, so the difference will remain (nearly) unaffected by external sources.
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Stranded copper wire is easier to bend and once terminated it is more vibration resistant.
Solid copper exists though but most people use one or the other because it’s annoying to buy stranded copper wire and solid copper wire the same gauge and color
Solid copper is nice in some circumstances though because it resists bending and bunching up to an extent. It’s also nice for some non electrical tasks like making a make shift zip tie.
Supper unintuitive knoladge – electricity does not run in wires. It runs around it and become weaker the further from wire it is. That creates multiple interestibg effects and problems. And most notorious problem – resistance. To reduce resistance it is necessary to increase surface area of wire. If you have one solid wire that its surface area is everyting around it. However if you have many thin wires than you can turn inside space to conductive surface too. It is called cross sectional area.
They are coiled to reduce another problem – magnetic field. If there is electricity than there is magnetic field. Coiling helps to make it “more noisy” and thus weaker. Thherefore precise electronic devices can filter it out from usefull magnetic field carriage.
Wile that true for all kind of wires, the higher voltage – the less cross section is used, because thin wires probe to damage, rips, melts etc
Electricity is a flow is electrons. That flow needs a wire going to the device and a wire returning from the device. So at least two. Often there is a third wire used to ground parts of the device a person might touch. This is for safety. The electrons are pushed by a voltage. That voltage can be dangerous and cause shocks. Grounding keeps the voltage close to zero on parts you might touch so you don’t get shocked. If any of these wires break it can cause problems. Coiling the wires inside the cable helps the cable bend without pulling too much on any of the wires. This helps keep the wires from breaking inside the cable and causing problems.
Electricity travels along the outside of the wire, so multiple thinner wires transfers more Electricity than one thick wire. Copper is highly conductive thats why it’s copper. It allows for more electricity to be transferred more efficiently.
In Cat5 cable, each copper wire has a specific function as it relates to data transfer. Power, send, and receive. Each copper wire is covered in a different color coating for making and tipping cables for installation. There is a recommended color scheme for, let’s say, a straight through cable. However, since they are all just copper you can technically use any scheme you want, as long as you use the same scheme on both sides of the cable.
Made that way its more flexible, coiling is necessary to get them in a tight bundle for covering with isolation. In a crimped contact or under spring load it also makes for better connection than a solid strand, because the loose bundle deforms and has more contact area.
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