Hello dear friends!
This week I would like to answer another interesting question:
How fast can electricity travel?
This is a very interesting question.
When you press the switch, the light goes on ... or off immediately.
That means electricity must be super-fast, right?
Hmmm. Imagine a long garden hose.
When you water the plants you turn on the water at the tap and immediately it starts gushing out of the end of the hose.
This happens because the hose is already filled with water and just turning on the tap forces the water out of the hose.
But power cables are so thin, how does that work?
Electricity doesn’t need so much space, but the principle is the same.
If you put a light switch in a circuit, a "pressure" is exerted on the cable,
which stimulates particles in the power cable to move.
Just like the water in the hose!
Exactly. But while this flow of particles is quite slow in itself, the pressure builds almost at the speed of light.
And that's why the light goes on IMMEDIATELY.
Because electricity is really fast.
