Speed of electricity

[fears]

At what speed does electicity move along.

If a wire is thicker than another would the speed be the same.

If two wires were differant lengths would one light a bulb quicker than the other.

[sir.knobby]

1. Speed of light maybe.

2. yes.

3.No

[ChuckFickens]

the speed of electricity is fairly slow, only a couple of millimetres a second if I recall correctly.

The speed that a electromagnetic wave propagates along a wire is about 99.9% of the speed of light. but the actual electrons are still moving fairly slow.

Imagine a hosepipe full of marbles...... if you slowly pushed more marbles into one end the ones the other end would pop out instantly but the actual marbles would be moving very slowly

and yes in the same way as light takes time to travel so does electricity, so in theory if you had two light bulbs on different length wires one will light after the othe. Butr the length of wire needed to make a difference that is noticeable would be huge!

[sir.knobby]

Depends if its ac or dc chucky ac moves up and down in a syne wave and dc just runs flat

[ChuckFickens]

DC the elctrons move very slowly in one way, AC they have no actually net movement as they are just wiggling back and forth a bit :)

[sir.knobby]

A bit like me on here

[ChuckFickens]

I more kinda rock slowly back and forth some nights on here :)

[sir.knobby]

Yea I know the feeling

[sod-the-m27]

Well, fears, I'll bet you are glad you asked now.

You have been most unfortunate to attract a couple of defectives to your thread, nothing to add, just rambling drivel.

[SSSid]

If you cant sleep one night, google "electron drift".
This will answer your question and give you a headache!

[ChuckFickens]

m27 my answers are correct and sensible replies for a question in science, not just rambling drivel.

if you'd care to post a back catalogue of your factual and helpful answers I'd be happy to review them for comment. Sorry to ask you this but they must have passed me by

[fo3nix]

Just to add, there is often confusion between group velocity and phase velocity.

The phase velocity of electrons in a wire (and what you're actually asking about), is just a few cm per second I believe.

The group velocity is what chuck's talking about with the housepipe and marbles -- it's near instant, which is why electricity seems so fast.

[Doc.Spock.1]

186,00 miles per second, same as speed of light.