So if I’m on stage with my electric bass guitar and I pluck a note, what happens is that my note (I guess impulse might be a better word) is transferred from one electron to the next through the cable and zips through all the wires and processors and amplifiers and out the speakers at one third the speed of light? Sort of like making a telephone with two cups and string?
I always kind of pictured it as I pluck my note and it creates a little packet that travels through the wires like a car going down the highway or something like that.
One thing I’m confused about are the roles of the core of a coaxial cable vs the mesh (ground?) surrounding it vs the insulation.
I pluck my note (my ‘message’). Instead of me telling my message to a messenger, and the messenger runs off and delivers my message to the amplifier, what happens is that my message is transferred to the amplifier via a chain of people between me and the amplifier passing the message down the line. Also my message could be corrupted by various misinterpretations and leakages along the way.
Or am I getting carried away (or propogated) with this analogy?
The analogy that’s always worked for me, for thinking about electricity, is water in pipes. If you have a pipe that is already full of water, not flowing, then you cause it to flow at one end, the water at the other end will immediately start flowing, even though each water molecule might be travelling very slowly.
In this analogy, pressure is the equivalent of voltage, and the flow rate is equivalent to electric current. This is a good way to help explain that voltage and current describe different things. You can have high pressure with a low flow rate, or vice-versa. And the amount of work done (power) goes up proportionally to the pressure, as well as with the flow, so power is voltage times current.