Conductors: How Electrical Conductors Work in Alarm Systems

What do electrons use to travel from one place to another? The answer to that question gives you the next piece of the puzzle. Although you may use your car to get around, electrons use something called a conductor. Electricity is simply the movement of electrons through a conductor. A lot of materials can act as conductors, but some are much better at it than others. Electrons can move more easily through metal than through plastic. In plastic, even though all the electrons are moving around their proton buddies, they pretty much stay in their own backyard. But in metal, the electrons are free to move all over the place.

A conductor is a material that allows electricity to flow through it with minimal resistance. This means that electrons can move freely within the material, making it possible for an electric current to be established. Conductors are essential in electrical circuits as they provide a path for the flow of electric charge from the source to the load. Some common examples of conductors include metals like copper, aluminum, and silver, which have high electrical conductivity. Conductors play a crucial role in the design and operation of electrical systems, as they determine the efficiency and safety of the electrical current flow. To conduct electricity along a chosen path and keep it from going all over the place like a lightning strike, we need Conductors to help with the flow of current and maintain a low resistance the flow current. These so-called paths form our metal wire that we use to complete the circuits with. The circuits close the path back to the source so that electricity have a path to follow.

We call these conductors.

An electrical material that offers very little resistance to the flow or movement of electrons.
Usually a metal. In security applications an example would be the cable that is used.

Materials that have free electrons and allow electrical current to flow easily are called conductors. In some materials like copper, the electrons are so loosely held by the atom and so close to the neighbouring atoms that it is difficult to determine which electron belongs to which atom. Under these conditions, the valence or free electrons tend to drift randomly from one atom to its neighbouring atoms. Under normal conditions the movement of the electrons is truly random, meaning they are moving in all directions by the same amount. However, if some outside force acts upon the material, this flow of electrons can be directed through materials and this flow is called electrical current. Materials that have free electrons and allow electrical current to flow easily are called conductors.

Free Electrons: Silver=1 Copper=1, Gold=1 , Aluminum=2
Material micro ohm-cm Silver=1.587, Copper=1.678, Gold=2.214 , Aluminium=2.650

In most cases we look at copper. Examples of other conductors is:

Silver
Gold
Aluminium

Wire that you use in projects is just a long strand of metal, usually made of copper. The wire has only one job — to allow electrons to travel through it. However, you can find a few variations in the types of wire available to you. In the following sections, we talk about which type of wire you use for different situations. When do you use each type of wire? It’s not as complicated as you may think:
You use stranded wire in projects where the wire will be moved around or for data transmission over longer distances. For example, you use stranded wires for multimeter leads because you move and flex the leads frequently. If you use a solid wire, it snaps in two after you flex it several times.
Use solid wire to connect components to the alarm system and other places where you don’t plan to move the wire around. You can easily insert the solid wire into holes or terminals, and that wire stays in the shape to which you mold it. If you try to use a stranded
wire in a small terminal connections, you have to twist the strands to get all of them in the hole, and you may break a strand which could short out the circuit.

With alarm systems we have 2 types off conductors. We can use solid core or stranded cable. It is recommended to consult the manufacturer’s specifications and guidelines when choosing the conductor type and gauge for an alarm system. Additionally, it is important to ensure that the conductor type and gauge is selected for the application.

Solid core cable– The conductor is a solid piece of metal wire and the gauge of the wire conductor differ depending on the application.
Stranded wire cable– The conductor consists of 6 or more stranded conductors that make of the gauge of the conductor depending of the application.

Size

You refer to the size of wire as wire gauge. The wire gauge is simply shorthand for the diameter of the wire. What’s confusing is that the relationship between wire gauge and wire diameter is essentially backwards. A smaller wire gauge means a larger wire diameter. Manufacturers saddled us with this backwards-naming scheme because of the manufacturing process they use for wires. To make a wire, the metal (usually copper) is pulled through a hole in a steel plate. To make a small diameter wire, the wire is pulled through a series of holes, each hole smaller than the previous one. The wire gauge refers to the number of different size holes the wire was pulled through to make the desired diameter. So the higher the number, the more times someone had to pull the wire and the
smaller that wire got in the process.