Comments by "Peter deWolf" (@StoneShards) on "Is Veritasium Wrong About Electricity?" video.

  1. Problem #4: the current teaching about electric current if fuzzy: what is the velocity of electric current? And WHY?! Does the amount of applied voltage affect the speed of current? What is the magnitude of electrons available in a wire? Coulomb's Law says one ampere is one coulomb of charge TRAVELING PAST A GIVEN POINT, at the urging of one volt, in one second. I've been told that the only movement in a wire that electrons are capable of is "drift current", which is so slow it would take months for an electron to travel and inch. It makes sense intuitively that the "pressure" of voltage should be felt instantaneously in every part of the wire--like that game fixture hanging metal balls as adjacent pendulums. But current, as a flow of particles in a pipe, is quite a different critter. Electrons have mass; mass has to be accelerated to a velocity in a certain amount of time; mass also exhibits inertia, which acts against acceleration...what do you do with that! In other words, I guess, what exactly IS a "current waveform"; how is it conveyed over a wire. If I change the frequency of the waveform at the source end of the wire, how does that change appear at the other end of the wire virtually instantaneously, given the electron flow dynamics involved?!
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