Does electricity travel at the speed of light?

Question

How fast is it then?

Answer 1

Electrical fields in theory do transmit at the speed of light. In real systems, wires have capacitance and other effects that slow the propagation. Typical propagation speeds are 0.3 to 0.7 times the speed of light, depending mostly on the wire shape and size, the characteristics of the insulation on the wire, and interactions with other conductors.

Current is the number of electrons moving past a point in the circuit. They move slowly on the average, but many of them move, so charge movement occurs throughout the circuit simultaneously.

Answer 2

If you mean the speed of electrons in a copper wire when a DC voltage is applied it depends on the strength of the field and is "on the order of millimeters per second".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_el...

If the voltage is AC then the electrons don't drift down the wire but just vibrate back and forth.

The speed of propagation of an electrical signal is another matter. Think of a water pipe. If the pipe is full of water and you put more water in one end water starts coming out of the other end almost immediately. The water molecules don't have to travel the length of the pipe to get the signal to the other end. In a similar fashion the electrons don't need to travel the length of the wire before an effect occurs at the other end. The signal propagates down the wire at a fast speed (close to the speed of light). The actual speed depends on the dielectric constant  of the space around the wires. For cable TV the signal travels at about 66% of the speed of light (there is a plastic dialectric filling the space between the conductors in coax cable).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of...

Answer 3

No, Electricity does not travel faster than light. Electric current through copper cable travels at a speed of 9 nano seconds per meter

Answer 4

No.

Nothing in the Universe can travel faster than the speed of light,some forces do come close to traveling the speed of light but they never reach the speed of light.

Answer 5

NO