Horst Paetzold, Age 12, Of Peterborough, Ont.. Canada., for his question:
How fast does electric current travel through the wires?
There seems to be a speed limit in the universe, and nothing we know of can out distance this limit. It is not quite accurate to say that the fastest traveler is light, for many other things can equal its speed. One is a current of electricity sent speeding through a wire circuit by a man made generator.
The objects needed to make an electric current are as simple as abc. There must be a magnet of the right shape, a wheel or bar made of copper and a long length of copper wire all in one piece. A magnet, of course, surrounds itself with an invisible magnetic field of force lines. The magnet used to make the first dynamo or generator was shaped like a horseshoe. At the open end of the u shape, the force lines interlock with extra strength.
The magnet was fixed flat on a board. A copper disc was then fixed so that it could be turned like a wheel between the open end of the horseshoe. The two ends of the copper wire were attached to the little dynamo. When the wheel was turned by a hand crank, the copper cut through and through the magnetic field, and this magic generated a current of electricity through the unbroken circuit of copper wire.
Robert Faraday, who made the first dynamo, did not know how or why it worked. Electric current had been used for many years before Robert Milliken proved that it was caused by moving electrons, those negatively charged particles that orbit the atomic nucleus. A generator jolts countless electrons in a wire circuit and sends them hopping from atom to atom.
The population of atoms and particles in a solid wire is very crowded, and in the moving traffic there are uncountable collisions. A speeding electron, jolted by the voltage of a distant generator, can travel no faster than a few miles a second. Yet the electric current in the wire circuit moves at the same speed as light about 186,000 miles a second.
Voltage pressure at the generator jolts electrons all through the circuit. Each aggitated electron generates its own electromagnetic field, somewhat like the field at the generator on a small scale. Each miniature field infects other electrons. One feature of all forms of electromagnetic energy is speed the speed of light. As the electrons relay this energy from one to the next, the current travels through the wires at about 186,000 miles a second fast enough to whip around the equator 50 times while you count to 60.
The nature of the copper atoms make this element very suitable for electric wiring. Its atomic number is 29, and normally it has 29 electrons. This is enough electrons to complete an inner orbiting shell of two, a second shell of 8 and. A third of 18. One electon remains to start & fourth shell. Such lonly electrons are not firmly attached to their parent atoms. Voltage pressures free countless swarms of these 29th electrons to relay the current through a circuit of copper wires.