If copper prices keep going up like they are, I'm going to switch to gold wire and save money. A 500' roll of 12 stranded was $64 dollars at the supply house yesterday. I know you can get it a little cheaper at the Depot($42) but even thats high. The supply house said its not going to stop their either.

Hey! Aluminum is a good conductor!

(DUCKS AND RUNS FOR COVER!)

Anybody have a tub of No-Alox and a keg of them little $$$ purple wire nuts??


A.D

Silver is a better conductor than gold, and it is less expensive.

I seem to remember something about Leslie Groves picking up some silver for his wiring needs, back in WW II when copper was in short supply.

Spools were $26 at the Ft Myers Home Depot Saturday. Maybe they are putting less wire on the spool here. It looked like 500 ft but I didn't pick it up to see the label.

Apperantly copper has a lower resistance than gold.
Metal Resistivity,

gold, 99.9 pure, 0 degrees C 2.22
silver, 99.98 pure, 18 degrees C 1.63
silver, electrolytic, 0 degrees C 1.47
copper, annealed, 20 degrees C 1.72
platinum, wire, 0 degrees C 11.0

Hmmm, I wonder how much it would cost to ship wire from Flordia to Chicago.

SolarPowered,

I was looking for that link through the search function, but could only get posts from a year ago. I thought it was resqcapt19 that posted the link and I thought it was in the order of 15,000 tons from the US treasury. Every time I get another fact from that project it fascinates me. I wonder if any other feat could compare in terms of how many people united for a common goal (willingly, not slave labor) the resources dedicated and the final product. A History Channel fact that blew me away was that during the enrichment process 1/4 of all the nation's electricty produced was consumed producing nuclear fuel.


[This message has been edited by Jps1006 (edited 01-17-2006).]