Sequential Lights in an Electronic Circuit?

Question

If you have a small circuit with the three lights and a switch, why do all the lights come on at the same time after you throw the switch?

I would buy fizixx's answer except for one thing: not only is light limited to 186,000 but also any information or impulse. The impulse along a chain of ping pong balls also cannot travel faster than the speed of light.

I am not sure if fizixx is referring to an actual experiment or not. If there is such a beast, it would be very difficult to explain.

Answer 1

Actually they don't. Their is about a one billionth of a second of a delay between lights, but your mind doesn't work that fast, so you do not perceive it.

Answer 2

I see there are a few misconceptions about electricity with the posts so far. It appears that folks think that electricity moves at the speed of light.

Well....it doesn't. It's a common belief and a common misunderstanding.

First, to answer your question, the lights probably do come on nearly simultaneously. However the reason is not what most people think. If the three lights were all connected to the same wire at exactly the same distance apart then they would (in theory) come on simultaneously.

Electricity is just the flow of electrons thru a conductor (the wire). The electrons lie on the potside of the conductor...any conductor. They flow along the outside of any conductor, NOT thru the inside the way most people probably believe.

Anyway, the electrons are fairly evenly distributed along the wire.....from beginning to end. When the switch is turned 'on' the battery or power source pushes on the electrons causing them to flow. Electrons are negatively charged, and they will repel each other. So, one will tend to puch against the other and that one will, in turn, push against the next, and so on. This efect happens very quickly and gives one the illusion of an electron moving very fast down a wire, but in reality an electron that passes thru one of the lights is not the same electron that passes thru another at the instant the lights come on.

It's like taking a large hollow tube filled with ping pong balls. If you shove one more ball into one eld one will pop out the other end....same idea.

Make sense?

That is what's happening.

Furthermore, one single electron takes a very long time to travel from one end of a wire a the way to another end. I worked it out once......for a large room, at a reasonable distance from a wal switch to a fluorescent lght on the ceiling, however many feet that might be, I don't recall what I guessed but it was probably a reasonable guess, it would take one electron about 40 hours to make that trip. This velocity has its own name and is called "drift velocity".

The reason why the lights probably do not come on simultaneously is because of variations in wire diameter, density or temperature along the path of the circuit. Slight variations influence the electron's progress.

Hope this helps you think more clearly about what is happening and a clear answer to your question.

:)

Answer 3

there are two kinds of circuits, one is called serial and the other parallel . when in a serial circuit one light is burned then the others won't work because the circuit will be open .when in a parallel circuit one light is burned it won't matter because the electricity will still flowing through the other lights . Electricity run to the speed of light that maybe won't be able to reach no in a million years .

Answer 4

The speed of eletricity is one of the fastest traveling energies we know.
It is second only to the speed of light which travels at 186,000
Miles Per Second. Electrical power travels just a bit slower than this,therefore the power in the lights seem to come on instantly

Answer 5

Although it appears that all three lights come on simultaneously, they don't. Electricity is propagated at the speed of light, which is not instantaneous. In fact, if different observers traveling through space were to see three lights come on in a similar circuit in space, they might give different answers about which light came on first depending on their relative rates of speed. One of the space travelers might say they came on simultaneously while another might say they came on in sequential order.

Answer 6

They all come on because the electricity flows through them all at the same time.

Answer 7

They don't. It just happens so quickly that your eyes can't see it, therefore only appearing to be instantaneous.