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The speed of this flow has multiple meanings. In everyday electrical and electronic devices, the signals travel as electromagnetic waves typically at 50%–99% of the speed of light in vacuum. The electrons themselves move much more slowly. See drift velocity and electron mobility.
The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted c, is a universal physical constant that is exactly equal to 299,792,458 metres per second (approximately 300,000 kilometres per second; 186,000 miles per second; 671 million miles per hour).
While the particles themselves can move quite slowly, sometimes with an average drift velocity only fractions of a millimetre per second, [37]: 17 the electric field that drives them itself propagates at close to the speed of light, enabling electrical signals to pass rapidly along wires. [44]
In the context of this article, "faster-than-light" means the transmission of information or matter faster than c, a constant equal to the speed of light in vacuum, which is 299,792,458 m/s (by definition of the metre) [3] or about 186,282.397 miles per second.
The velocity factor (VF), [1] also called wave propagation (relative) speed or (relative) velocity of propagation (VoP or ), [2] of a transmission medium is the ratio of the speed at which a wavefront (of an electromagnetic signal, a radio signal, a light pulse in an optical fibre or a change of the electrical voltage on a copper wire) passes through the medium, to the speed of light in vacuum.
The relationships amongst electricity, magnetism, and the speed of light can be summarized by the modern equation: = . The left-hand side is the speed of light and the right-hand side is a quantity related to the constants that appear in the equations governing electricity and magnetism.
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The speed of light in vacuum is defined to be exactly 299 792 458 m/s (approximately 186,282 miles per second). The fixed value of the speed of light in SI units results from the fact that the metre is now defined in terms of the speed of light. All forms of electromagnetic radiation move at exactly this same speed in vacuum.