Wire is one of those components which is absolutely essential to our work in Electronics.
Wires (or can also be referred to as cables) are rated to carry a specific load or amperage meaning that the load imposed on them should be one that they are able to carry safely See Fig 1.
The gauge of the wire you are using will dictate the maximum load of the wire. We can find the gauge of the wire by cutting it, removing some of the sleeving and measuring the cross section Fig 2.
It is important that we choose the right type of wire for the job we are doing and checking information from suppliers as coatings etc can change the rating of wire.
Within the relative safety of our activities in this book (relatively low DC voltage and load), we only need to make one decision:
Should we use single cored or stranded wire (1mm cross section for Breadboard use)?
When we are doing activities on breadboard, it is usual to use 0.6 to 1mm single core wire as it is easy to push single core wire into the slots see Fig 3.
An important decision to make when choosing wire is also the colour of the plastic (PVC) sleeving which covers it.
As a general rule (and standard convention), I always use Black and Red for Negative and Positive connections but I use a range of other colours when doing other connections which is sometimes dependant on availability.