since the speed of light is not the speed at which an electron moves

[Walleye]

but the speed at which a bump transfers through electrons within a wire, wouldnt it be impossible to sustain a speed of (speed of light) within the wire with sustained current flow?

wouldnt it just defacto down to the speed of electron movement?




or am i just too tired to know what the hell i'm thinking?

 

[RossGr]

Isn't there another thread about this just down the page. Signal speed in a wire is something like .3c .

 

[rjain]

I was mistaken. It's actually more like 2c/3, it seems. I knew there was a 3 in the denominator, tho.

In any case, the max speed of the propagation of the electric field front is the speed of light (by definition, actually). Electricity isn't the electrons themselves, as I said before. It's the travelling wave impulse in the electric field. The electrons all move more-or-less together, one repelling the next, in order to cause the electrons to move in the opposite of the direction of current flow. This doesn't quite happen at the speed of light becuase thermal vibrations, transverse (not in the direction of the wire) motions, and the mass of the electrons themselves slows the process down.

 

[K6]

the "slow" speed of electron is why optical logic are faster than electronic.