how Internet back in the copper wire days could still transmit data in seconds when Electrons flow through copper at a few metres per second.
In: 0
Imagine you have a line of cups with ping pong balls in them. The cups represent atoms in the wire, and the ping pong balls represent the electrons. Imagine each cup can only hold one ping pong ball, and you add a ping pong ball to the cup on the left. The ping pong ball that was already there shuffles to the cup to the right. But that cup also can only hold one ping pong ball, so the ball that was already there shuffles to the right. And so on.
This is how electricity is working — each “ping pong ball” moves comparatively slowly, but the way they force each other down the line is significantly swifter. When we talk about signals in this way, we don’t much care about the speed of a single electron; we care about the speed of the whole system.
Latest Answers