Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to A curiosity or a paradox: What moves at the speed-of-light in an electric circuit?

re: A curiosity or a paradox: What moves at the speed-of-light in an electric circuit?

Try this link and this one.

When electric current in a material is proportional to the voltage across it, the material is said to be "ohmic", or to obey Ohm's law. A microscopic view suggests that this proportionality comes from the fact that an applied electric field superimposes a small drift velocity on the free electrons in a metal. For ordinary currents, this drift velocity is on the order of millimeters per second in constrast to the speeds of the electrons themselves which are on the order of a million meters per second. Even the electron speeds are themselves small compared to the speed of transmission of an electrical signal down a wire, which is on the order of the speed of light, 300 million meters per second.

You can get the results of a Google search on electricity and the speed of light here.

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