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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.
In a vacuum, electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light, commonly denoted c. The frequency of the wave's oscillation determines its wavelength in the electromagnetic spectrum. In homogeneous, isotropic media, the oscillations of the two fields are on average perpendicular to each other and perpendicular to the direction of energy and ...
For example, for visible light, the refractive index of glass is typically around 1.5, meaning that light in glass travels at c / 1.5 ≈ 200 000 km/s (124 000 mi/s); the refractive index of air for visible light is about 1.0003, so the speed of light in air is about 90 km/s (56 mi/s) slower than c.
Air is tenuous enough that in the Earth's atmosphere radio waves travel at very nearly the speed of light. The wavelength λ {\displaystyle \lambda } is the distance from one peak (crest) of the wave's electric field to the next, and is inversely proportional to the frequency f {\displaystyle f} of the wave.
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]
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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.
is the speed of light (i.e. phase velocity) in a medium with permeability μ, and permittivity ε, and ∇ 2 is the Laplace operator. In a vacuum, v ph = c 0 = 299 792 458 m/s, a fundamental physical constant. [1] The electromagnetic wave equation derives from Maxwell's equations.