Skin effect to the rescue! Mystery solved! The current travels inside the conductor. In the case of a fuse, if the current traveled outside the fuse wire it would not melt when required. Hel-loo, people!
Distribution of current flow in a cylindrical conductor, shown in cross section. For
alternating current, the current density decreases exponentially from the surface towards the inside. The skin depth, δ, is defined as the depth where the current density is just 1/e (about 37%) of the value at the surface; it depends on the frequency of the current and the electrical and magnetic properties of the conductor.
Each 3-wire bundle in this power transmission installation acts as a single conductor. A single wire using the same amount of metal per kilometer would have higher losses due to the skin effect.
Skin effect is the tendency of an alternating electric current (AC) to become distributed within a conductor such that the current density is largest near the surface of the conductor, and decreases with greater depths in the conductor. The electric current flows mainly at the "skin" of the conductor, between the outer surface and a level called the skin depth. The skin effect causes the effective resistance of the conductor to increase at higher frequencies where the skin depth is smaller, thus reducing the effective cross-section of the conductor. The skin effect is due to opposing eddy currents induced by the changing magnetic field resulting from the alternating current. At 60 Hz in copper, the skin depth is about 8.5 mm. At high frequencies the skin depth becomes much smaller. Increased AC resistance due to the skin effect can be mitigated by using specially woven litz wire. Because the interior of a large conductor carries so little of the current, tubular conductors such as pipe can be used to save weight and cost.
