I understand that the electrons themselves in a material travel fairly slow, but I’m talking about actual signal propagation. The speed of an electrical signal traveling through copper can achieve very high fractions of c, but the speed of sound in copper is only around 5010m/s. What causes the disconnect?
In: Physics
The speed of sound in a material relates to how quickly a part of it will move when a force is imparted on it. For example, if you had a many km long pole made of copper and then you pushed one end the other end would only move once that force had moved through the material and this moves at the speed of sound.
Electricity moving through a conductor is an entirely different process.
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