Is titanium a good conductor?
Titanium is not a good conductor of electricity. Ouch---I have
to disagree with the person who posted the answer above. It is
correct in one sense... compared to metals like silver and copper,
titanium is not a good conductor. Its conductivity is about 25
times less. Yet anyone stupid enough to have stuck a knife in an
electrical socket (please dear God don't try this) knows that steel
conducts electricity pretty darn well and it has a conductivity
comparable to titanium's. So let's compare titanium's conductivity
to some other compounds and see what it means to be a good
conductor or a poor conductor. Metals are generally considered good
conductors. Titanium is a metal and thus conducts pretty well
compared to most other compounds. Semiconductors (metalloids) are
so-so conductors. Silicon is a commonly used semiconductor.
Titanium's conductivity is 10 billion times greater than silicon's.
Germanium is another commonly used semiconductor. Titanium's
conductivity is one million times greater than germanium. Non
metals are insulators---they don't conduct much at all. Titanium's
conductivity is around 10,000,000,000,000 times greater than the
conductivity of iodine, which is an insulator. Sulfur is another
insulator. It's conductivity is around
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 smaller than titanium's. So is
titanium a good conductor? ABSOLUTELY IT IS! Is it as good a
conductor as some other metals? No. Draw your own conclusion. It
has an electrical resistivity of (20 °C) 0.420 µΩ·m. Silver, the
best conductor has an electrical resistivity of (20°C) 0.01587
µΩ·m. If that doesn't mean anything to you, don't feel bad. Suffice
to say that it means silver is a much better conductor. Divide the
two... you get that silver is 26 times less resistive, or, as I
said above, ~25 times more conductive.