1. (noun)resistance, opposition the action of opposing something that you disapprove or disagree with "he encountered a general feeling of resistance from many citizens"; "despite opposition from the newspapers he went ahead"
2. (noun)resistance any mechanical force that tends to retard or oppose motion
3. (noun)electric resistance, electrical resistance, impedance, resistance, resistivity, ohmic resistance a material's opposition to the flow of electric current; measured in ohms
4. (noun)resistance the militaryaction of resisting the enemy's advance "the enemy offered little resistance"
6. (noun)resistance the capacity of an organism to defend itself against harmful environmental agents "these trees are widely planted because of their resistance to salt and smog"
8. (noun)resistance the degree of unresponsiveness of a disease-causing microorganism to antibiotics or other drugs (as in penicillin-resistant bacteria)
1. (noun)resistance when sb opposes or challenges sth her resistance to change; their resistance against NATO rules
2. resistance when sb fights back against an attack He was so strong that resistance was useless.; Villagers put up heavy resistance to the rebel attack.
3. resistance put up a resistance the ability to not be harmed or damaged The insects developed a resistance to the chemicals.
4. resistance a force that slows motion wind resistance
Definition of 'resistance'
Webster Dictionary
1. (noun)resistance the act of resisting; opposition, passive or active
The fall of potential is thus expressed by Daniell. "In a conductor, say a wire, along which a current is steadily and uniformly passing, there is no internal accumulation of electricity, no density of internal distribution; there is, on the other hand, an unequally distributed charge of electricity on the surface of the wire, which results in a potential diminishing within the wire from one end of the wire to the other."
Light rays falling on some substances, notably selenium, q. v., vary the resistance.
Longitudinal stretching of a conductor decreases it, it increases with longitudinal compression, and increases in iron and diminishes in tin and zinc when a transverse stress tends to widen the conductor.
[Transcriber's note: At room temperatures, the thermalmotion of ions in the conductor's crystallattice scatters the electrons of the current. Imperfections of the lattice contribute slightly. At low temperatures superconductivity (zero resistance) can occur because an energy gap between the electrons and the crystallattice prevents any interaction. At the time of this book, none of this was known. "Jumps from molecule to molecule" is a good guess.]