Re:Why is electricity so hard to understand? (1989)
by OkayPhysicist on Saturday March 06, 2021 @11:49AM
(#26368620)
No, this is the whole "confusing the wave and the medium" problem. Drift velocity (the technical name for "how fast are electrons moving through this wire") has effectively nothing at all to do with the propagation of electrical properties through a circuit.
If electrical properties propagated at the drift velocity, there'd be an appreciable delay when you flipped your light switch.
If electrical properties propagated at the drift velocity, there'd be an appreciable delay when you flipped your light switch.