Corrections and FAQ in this comment!
Check out the other channel for follow up videos, and video Q&A that I'll be posting in a few weeks with questions from here and from Patreon!
https://www.youtube.com/@AlphaPhoenix2 Check out the Patron page if you want to support the channel, get early access to videos, and join us on Discord!
https://www.patreon.com/AlphaPhoenix Thanks to @ElectroBOOM for giving me a sanity check on this data a few months ago! (I hope you like the final video)
FAQ:
0) Questions about the experimental setup (including the effect of the probes on the circuit while I was measuring) are here!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sty0Y1qmgEYc If anybody wants to recreate this project, or turn it into an undergrad physics lab. hopefully there's plenty of info there! If I can remember how to use github I'll post some of my visualization code and leave a link on that video.
1) Lots of commenters have that I'm confusing voltage and current at times, but I tried to be very careful with my language. Current is the actual motion of the electrons, and in the graphic I showed with the blue dots moving around, I'm calculating that motion based on the voltage. it's basically the current that is NECESSARY to produce those voltage patterns. I also did a measurement where I measured the current directly by placing a very small resistor at the input lines and measuring the voltage drop across it over time, so I know my calculation lines up vaguely with that, but it WAS only a measurement at one point. If somebody wants to put a quarter ohm resistor every 4 feet along a wire and measure more voltages, I'd LOVE to see the data! I'll talk about the script a bit more in the Q&A video that hopefully will be out in a few weeks!
2) When you first flip the switch, the battery doesn't actually see a "dead short". The current out of the battery initially is limited by the line impedance, which depends on the properties and dimensions of the cable. In this case, it's the same current you'd get by bridging the switch with a 150 ohm resistor!
3) A lot of people have questioned the use of the words "communicate" and "sending information". I admit I anthropomorphize a bit too much in this video, but particles and groups of particles "communicating" and the rate at which "information" can move are very important hard physics terms that don't imply the particles are thinking. "Information" here consists of things like partical position, and they pass this information between each other using the electric field.
4) Water is a compressible fluid. if water wasn't a compressible fluid than pressure wouldn't work and water wouldn't be able to flow around corners in pipes. The way I'm using it it's actually EXTREMELY compressible (in the lateral) direction because it's allowed to expand upwards without getting significantly denser. Electrons in a wire are orders of magnitude less compressible than water, but it's still worthwhile to think of them bunching up!