Take the 2-minute tour ×  How is possible for current to flow so
fast when charge flows so slow?  We know electrons travel very
slowly while charge travels at ~the speed of light.
share|improve this question add comment  3 Answers  up vote 10
down vote accepted  It seems you are contrasting the speed of
propagation of current with the speed of the individual charge
carriers.  These two things are clearly separate. There are many
examples. Consider sound.  A fire cracker goes off at the other
end of a football field from you. You hear the sound a few 100
ms later. The air molecules that were by the firecracker didn't
end up by you. They didn't travel far at all. However, they
pushed on their neighbors, which pushed on their neighbors, etc,
all the way to your ears. This pushing can propagate a lot
faster than individual molecules can move.  Think of a long
hollow cardboard tube filled with small balls just a little
smaller than the inside diameter of the tube. All the balls are
touching each other. You push o