  Cuprate superconductors have many different atoms per unit cell. A large
fraction of cells (5-25%) must be modified ("doped") before the material
superconducts. Thus it is not surprising that there is little consensus on the
superconducting mechanism, despite almost 200,000 papers. Most astonishing is
that for the simplest electrical property, the resistance, "despite sustained
theoretical efforts over the past two decades, its origin and its relation to
the superconducting mechanism remain a profound, unsolved mystery." Currently,
model parameters used to fit normal state properties are experiment specific
and vary arbitrarily from one doping to the other. Here, we provide a
quantitative explanation for the temperature and doping dependence of the
resistivity, Hall effect, and magnetoresistance in one self-consistent model by
showing that cuprates are intrinsically inhomogeneous with a percolating
metallic region and insulating regions. Using simple counting of dopant-induced
plaquettes, we show that the superconducting pairing and resistivity are due to
phonons.
