My understanding is that current flow is like when you have a garden hose that is already full of water: as soon as you open the tap, water instantly comes out of the other end of the hose.
So when a generator pushes current through a power grid, do the electrons move at the speed of light (as many believe), or is it more a case of them all bumping each other along instantaneously,, as with the molecules of water in the garden hose?
In: Physics
Two different things here
The speed of electricity is not how fast electrons move, but instead how fast the electric field moves. It’s the electric field that actually does the work, and that moves at a bit under the speed of light. The electric field at your outlet is constantly changing so there’s usable electricity there instantly and you don’t have to wait for it to come from the power station
The actual electrons don’t move much. They bounce around off the atoms in the wire and drift in one direction slowly, very slowly
The average speed after all the bouncing around of 1Amp of current in a 3 mm^2 wire(roughly the size in your walls) is about 20 micrometers per second. Each electron is moving a fair bit quicker but with all the bouncing they can’t make much forward progress
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