How Fast Is The Speed Of Electricity In Mph

This concept is known as drift velocity.

How fast is the speed of electricity in mph. Electrons are negatively charged. This energy travels as electromagnetic waves at about the speed of light which is 670 616 629 miles per hour 1 or 300 million meters per second 2 however the electrons themselves within the wave move more slowly. It s the electromagnetic wave rippling through the electrons that propagates at close to the speed of light. What is the speed of electrons in electricity.

Electricity travels at the speed of light which is 186 000 miles per second. Lastly a few people believe that electricity travels at the speed of light because they confuse the speed of individual electrons with the speed of the electromagnetic waves the electrons radiate. Yet as fast as that is it is never fast enough. Lightning travels at around 220 000 miles per hour when traveling downwards from a cloud and then reaches a speed of 220 000 000 miles per hour when moving skyward on its return stroke.

Drift velocity the average speed at which electrons travel in a conductor when subjected to an electric field is about 1mm per second. This is because electricity is electromagnetic radiation just like light. Within the tiny chip electricity has to flow only a couple of millimeters and within an entire computer only a few feet. Electricity is the flow of electrons through a conducting wire such as copper and aluminum.

More precisely the speed is 299 792 458 meters per second in a vacuum. I will assume we are referring to a current of electrical charge traveling through a metal wire such as through the power cord of a lamp. A flash of lightning is just 1 to 2 inches wide but it generates a massive amount of electricity that is equal to 300 million volts or 30 000 amps. This inherent speed of mother nature is why computers work so fast.

However while an electron as an indivisible mass bearing particle cannot travel at the speed of light its effects can well nearly. Well it depends on what you mean by electricity the word electricity has more than one contradictory meaning so before we can talk about its flow we have to decide on which of several electricities we really mean for a discussion of electric current see below. Speed of electricity 1996 bill beaty how fast does electricity flow. The word electricity refers generally to the movement of electrons or other charge carriers through a conductor in the presence of potential and an electric field the speed of this flow has multiple meanings.

The speed of electricity really depends on what you mean by the word electricity.