In domestic current-carrying wires, there are many thin copper wires inside the plastic insulation. Why is that so? Why can’t there be a single thick copper wire carrying the current instead of so many thin ones?
In: Engineering
If you take a phone book, you can easily bend it in the middle, but only in one orientation: parallel to the spine of the book.
What happens if you try to bend it perpendicular to the spine? The spine resists bending, and you’re going to damage the spine if you do. That’s because the individual pages are glued together there and cannot move relative to each other.
A stranded wire with small individual wires behaves like a phone book that you’re bending parallel to the spine, and a solid wire with one large conductor inside behaves more like a phone book that you’re trying to bend perpendicular to the spine. It’s harder to do and you’re going to damage the conductor.
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