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How does increasing the cross-sectional area of a wire affect its electrical resistance?
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Increasing the cross-sectional area of a wire results in a smaller electrical resistance.
This relationship is defined by the formula for resistance, , where is the resistance, is the resistivity of the material, is the length of the wire, and is the cross-sectional area. Because the area appears in the denominator of this equation, increasing the cross-sectional area while keeping the length and material constant reduces the overall resistance to the flow of electric charge.12