A wire of length and cross-sectional area having resistivity is bent into a complete circle. The resistance between diametrically opposite points will be:
- A
- B
- C
- D
A wire of length and cross-sectional area having resistivity is bent into a complete circle. The resistance between diametrically opposite points will be:
Correct answer:D
Standard Method
Given: Length of the wire , cross-sectional area , and resistivity .
Find: The resistance between diametrically opposite points when the wire is bent into a complete circle.
The solution states that the resistance of the full wire is
When the wire is bent into a circle, diametrically opposite points divide it into two equal semicircles. So the resistance of each semicircle is
These two semicircles are in parallel, hence
Therefore,
So the working shown in the solution gives .
However, this value does not match any of the listed options. The page itself declares The Correct Option is D, and the answer key also points to option D. This is a source-page discrepancy between the shown working and the listed options.
Therefore, based on the recorded option mapping, the correct option is D, even though the extracted working evaluates to .
Detailed Consistency Check
Given: The wire has total resistance found from
with , , and .
Find: Which option should be selected from the solution's.
Substituting the values from the solution:
Each semicircle has half the length, so each has resistance
Now two equal resistances in parallel give
Thus, the numerical result implied by the solution is . Since none of the options contains this value, the solution's is internally inconsistent. The source explicitly labels D as correct, so the extracted answer is recorded as D with this discrepancy noted.
A common mistake is to use the full wire resistance directly as the answer. This is wrong because diametrically opposite points split the circular wire into two equal semicircular paths. First find the resistance of each semicircle, then combine them in parallel.
Another mistake is to add the two semicircle resistances in series. That is incorrect because both semicircular paths connect the same two endpoints, so they are in parallel, not in series.
Students may forget to convert into . Using inconsistent SI units gives an incorrect total resistance. Always convert area into square metres before applying .
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