Talk:Conductivity near the percolation threshold

What does this mean?

My understanding of this article is that as the metallic content of the mixture is increased there is a sudden change, at some critical point, to conductive behaviour rather than a linear increase in conductivity pro-rata with the metallic content. This is because below the critical point the particles of metal are isolated from each other by the dielectric matrix, or at least only in contact with local neighbours, but at the critical point and beyond there is a statistical probability that the metal particles will succeed in joining together over a long range and thus provide a conductive path from end-to-end.

Since I knew nothing about this subject prior to reading the article and its links, I am disinclined to copyedit the article without my understanding being confirmed by someone knowledgable. Copyediting, however, is badly required, it is very hard to follow even with technical knowledge as a starting point.

It seems to me that a consequence of the statistical view is that the critical point of metallic content will increase with decreasing conductor diameter from some asymptotic infinite limit. If this is so, it has practical importance in the engineering use of conductive plastic products and it would be good if this could be described in the article also. SpinningSpark 15:45, 1 April 2011 (UTC)