Perfect conductor

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A perfect conductor is an electrical conductor with no resistivity. The concept is used to model systems in which the electrical resistance or resistivity is negligible compared to other effects. One such model is ideal magnetohydrodynamics, the study of perfectly conductive fluids. Another example is electrical circuit diagrams, which carry the implicit assumption that the wires connecting the components have no resistance.

All known perfect conductors are also superconductors: in addition to having no electrical resistance they exhibit quantum effects such as the Meissner effect and quantization of magnetic flux. A perfect conductor without those properties is known as a classical superconductor, but that phrase is ambiguous as it is also used in some communities to distinguish between conventional superconductors and high-temperature superconductors.