Joule heating
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In electronics, and in physics more broadly, Joule heating refers to the increase in temperature of a conductor as a result of resistance to an electrical current flowing through it.
At an atomic level, Joule heating is the result of moving electrons colliding with atoms in a conductor, whereupon momentum is transferred to the atom, increasing its kinetic energy (see heat).
Joule heating is named for James Prescott Joule, the first to enunciate what is now Joule's law, relating the amount of heat released from an electrical resistor to its resistance and the charge passed through it.
When similar collisions cause a permanent structural change, rather than an elastic response, the result is known as electromigration.