Electrical contacts Electrical contacts An electrical contact is an electrical circuit component found in electrical switches, relays, connectors and circuit breakers. Each contact is a piece of electrically conductive material, usually metal. When a pair of contacts touch, they can pass an electrical current with a certain contact resistance, dependent on surface structure, surface chemistry and contact time; when the pair is separated by an insulating gap, then the pair does not pass a current. When the contacts touch, the switch is "closed"; when the contacts are separated, the switch is "open". The gap must be an insulating medium such as air,
Electrical element inductance non-essential since a gyrator terminated with one of these at port 2 will be equivalent to the other at port 1. However, transformer, capacitance and inductance are normally retained in analysis because they are the ideal properties of the basic physical components transformer, inductor and capacitor whereas a must be constructed as an active circuit. The following are examples of representation of components by way of electrical elements. Electrical element Electrical elements are conceptual abstractions representing idealized electrical components, such as resistors, capacitors, and inductors, used in the analysis of electrical networks. All electrical networks can be analyzed as