On Fri, Oct 31, 2025 at 04:23:46PM +0000, fxkl47BF@protonmail.com wrote: > On Fri, 31 Oct 2025, Nicolas George wrote: > > > fxkl47BF@protonmail.com (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... Cheers -- t
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