Watch how electricity reacts to a "fork in the road"

[Korishan]

Really awesome explanation and demonstration of how electricity propagates down wires

View: https://youtu.be/2AXv49dDQJw

 

[rebelrider.mike]

Pretty interesting results. It's easy to think of a wire as just a hose for electrons. But it turns out to be much more complicated. I wonder if this has a practical effect on a larger scale like the power grid. Like when power is restored to a large area after an outage.

 

[Korishan]

I guess there'd probably be a lot of sloshing going on with AC. But it would be interesting to know, tho.
Maybe that's why there's peaks in the voltage much higher than RMS?

 

[harrisonpatm]

Reminds me of the Veratasium video awhile back about how fast electricity travels, all the other hobby electronic youtubers had a field day arguing with him about it

 

[rebelrider.mike]

I'm not sure if the time scales are the same, but I wonder if this is why surge protection devices are supposed to be put as close to the main breaker as possible for a whole house installation. Drain the electric tsunami before it can get to important stuff in the house.

 

[Korishan]

Possibly, makes sense. But, this could be one of those things that might not have been thought of due to lack of fast enough equipment to realize. Just that it "worked" when it placed in certain locations.

Not saying that the EE's that have come up with these magical devices that can tame lightning blasts haven't done these same tests. I've seen some set ups where they have literally miles of cable ran in the testing room by looping the wire around large half drums that were separated by several hundred feet (think cutting a drum in half length wise and then separating them by distance). This was specifically for Cat5e testing, but the method would translate the same over to electrical testing.