On Fri, 31 Oct 2025, [email protected] wrote: > On Fri, Oct 31, 2025 at 04:23:46PM +0000, [email protected] wrote: >> On Fri, 31 Oct 2025, Nicolas George wrote: >> >>> [email protected] (HE12025-10-31): >>>> i run a command preceded by time and pipe it to mail >>>> the results of time is not included in the mail >>>> >>>> time sleep 2 2>&1 | mail -s foo bar@localhost >>> >>> Try this: >>> >>> time sleep 3 | sleep 10 >>> >>> … observe carefully the output and deduce something important about >>> time. >>> >> >> that's easy >> the electrons are moving near the speed of light >> so time slows down :) > > The electrons move actually pretty slowly. It's the electrical field > what moves quickly. > > Let's assume copper, at a density of 8.9 g/cm^3, and an atomic weight > of 63.5: 1mm^3 of copper has 6.02*10^23 * 8.9 * 10^-3 * (1/63.5) atoms, > i.e. 8.44 * 10^19 atoms, each contributing one electron to the conduction > band (the last lone S1). At 1.6 * 10^-19 C, that makes 13.5C of charge > available for conduction in each mm^3, which is a friggin' lot. > > If you push 1A across a wire with a cross section of 1mm^2, your > electrons would be moving at 1/13.5 mm/s, i.e. 0.074 mm/s: I can > hear the snails in my garden yawning :) > > I might have lost an order of magnitude here or there, but the kind > of result is somewhat consistent with the dim memories I have from a > former life...
i worked maintenance in a factory so i can't argue with any of that but please clarify is this 0.074 mm/s along the length of the conductor what about moving in other directions how far does an electron actually travel in one second
