Determine how far electricity travels in 7 ms. Express your answer in miles. ?

Question

Determine how far electricity travels in 7 ms. Express your answer in miles. ?

Answer 1

electricity travels at the speed of light (more or less).

speed of light = 299,792,458 meters/sec

multiply that by 7 ms (.007) and you have the answer in meters.

divide that by 609.344 (meters/mile) and there you go.

Answer 2

What is a ms, a millisecond?  The expected answer is probably how far an electrical pulse would travel in that time which would be close to the speed of light.  However the exact speed would depend in part on the type of conductor being used.  If you ignore that then just multiply 7 ms or .007 sec times whatever value you want to use for the speed of light (roughly 168000 mi/sec.)

However the actual speed of the electrons (call the drift speed) is much less.  A pulse of electricity going at the speed of light can be thought of as electrons bumping into each other and passing the signal ahead.  Each electron doesn't go very far.