If electricity is faster than the speed of sound why does it not make a sonic boom?
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Normal electricity isn’t moving by pushing atoms aside. It’s moving through the space “between” atoms. Nothing is getting displaced, so no sonic boom opportunity. The electrons themselves also aren’t going very fast (the electric *field* moves very fast…speed of light fast…but it has no mass and doesn’t displace anything).
Lots of thunder references here…that’s not a sonic boom from the electricity. The electricity in a lightning bolt isn’t going that fast. But it superheats the air, which tries to expand really fast, and that moving air *is* trying to go fast and shove air out of the way. That’s a conventional air-in-air sonic boom, like a jet exhaust, that’s powered by the electricity.
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