Usain Bolt is faster than electricity!

Usain Bolt is fast but is he faster than electricity? Well…Yes, yes he is. In fact so are you.

Electrons, as their name suggests, are the stuff of electricity. They are the negative subatomic particles that flow down the wires and do the work in your electrical appliance. The electrons are pushed and pulled around the powerlines by magnets in giant generators that are turned by steam or falling water in power plants around the country. While batteries use chemical energy to power electron movement. But what might surprise you is the speed at which these electrons move. When we think of electricity we think of something that is so fast that it is nearly instant. This is was led electricity to be used as example of speed by the great poet Muhammad Ali -“I’m so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark”. But the truth is the electrons flow down normal power lines slower than walking speed (somewhere in the order of one foot per hour), therefore your slow stumble to the coffee this morning was faster than electricity. So how does the light go on and off so quickly then? The answer is that the wire from the switch to the light is already full of electrons, they just aren’t moving and so can’t do any work. When you turn the light switch on the electrons are pushed and pulled nearly instantly and immediately begin their slow crawl around the wires, now that they are moving they can do work. A good way to think of this is imagine the wire full of electrons as a long pipe full of billiard balls and switching the light on is like try to push more billiard balls into the pipe, even though an individual billiard ball may take a very long time to travel the length of the pipe, as soon as you push one ball into the pipe at one end a ball will (nearly instantly) fall out the other end. So put a smile on your face because you are faster than electricity.