I guess there is ! but I don't have any idea about how fast electricity gets.
I think that it depends on the material (water, steal...) but do you have a value ?

i have no idear but i think its how fast the electrons move

um is it something to do with the current? colomes/sec

i haven't done energy in ages and have forgoten most of it

SG-N,

Electricity travels at the speed of light. However, the electrons themselves travel at much lower speeds.

Tom

I believe it is actually a bit lower than light-speed.

Thanks for your answers ! I thougt about a long time ago...

Asking how fast an electric current is (electricity), is like asking how fast a water current is. Instead of wires with copper inside of them, which electrons move down. We could.... if we really wanted to, fill small wires/tubes with water instead of copper and push the water down the tubes instead of electrons. The faster you push, the faster the current.

But no matter how fast it is, it happens fast. Imagine having a straw that replaced all wires in a city. If you blew into the straw hard enough all the water in the wires would start moving pretty damn fast.

This is called kinetic energy and all your appliances use it to work. Power is just another term for kinetic energy. It doesn't matter what is in the wires, all that matters is that what is in the wires is moving and your appliances can use that movement (kinetic energy) to do work. You could having a current of dogs and cats going down a huge tube, and as long as you can transfer the energy to your stereo, then your stereo will use that movement of cats and dogs (animilicity?) to move its speakers. Which in turn passes the kinetic energy (power) to air molecules, which pass on kinetic energy (power) to your eardrum.

rough explanation

River moves watermill.
Watermill moves electrons.
Electrons move speakers.
Speakers move air particles.
Air particles move eardrum.

Saith, you are not correct here. A current of cats and dogs would be FAR too noisy to drive a hi-fi set. Seriously, the analogy with air and pipes is a good picture, but it is only valid for a general picture. I will be using it too, hehehe:

Voltage ~ Pressure
Current ~ Amount of air per second, i. e. flow
Power ~ Pressure multiplied with flow
Energy ~ Flow multiplied with time

Electricity propagetes through a wire at about 90% of the speed of light, the exact speed depending on the alloy of the wire and the surrounding medium (air or some isolation materiel). That means that when you switch on the current, it takes a little over one second before current flows in the other end of your wire if it is 300,000,000 meters long.

Electricity is conducted by individual electrons jumping from atom to atom. When an electron arrives at an atom, it pushes another off that atom, etc. that means that individual atoms travel much slower, something to the order of hundreds of meters per second.

Hans

http://www.radioelectronicschool.com/downloads/howfast.pdf

WOW! Interesting, thanks for the link!

Hans

What does an Ammeter measure then? :confused:

An ammeter measures current, Ampéres.

Ususally the analogy of water works very well for explaining electricity. However, when explaining the speed of electricity you have to be very careful.

You have to realize that an electric pulse or signal is not transmitted by moving electrons. To clarify that statement: the transmission of a signal is due to collisions between electrons. This "movement" if you will is MUCH faster than the actual speed that the electrons move at. Derivations of equations that reveal both quantities is quite straight forward. If you would like the relevant equations I'm sure I could dig them up for you. Just realize that the speed the electrons move at and the speed the signal is transmitted at are very different. This obviously contradicts the behavior of water running in a river or through a hose.