this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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The electrons are very much moving, even if at an incredibly slow pace of ~1cm/s. It's just that they push the electrons ahead of them which puch the ones in front of then, etc. which makes electricity so fast.
It is however somewhat true for AC because there the electrons just get pushed back and forth 50/60 times per second, making them more or less stay in place
In DC they actually are moving, but it's something like a few millimeters per hour on average
Can confirm. Traffic is awful on the Beltway.
Well they do move, but just incredibly slowly.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/350612/speed-of-electrons-in-a-wire
To be fair, electrical engineers make a living by ignoring Maxwell's equations and the real behavior of electricity (the analogy of electrons pushing each other to transmit energy is also wrong, just less wrong). At RF you can't ignore them, and RF engineering is often known as black magic.