winnie said:
I generally hate the electricity as water flow analogies, but consider this: given a pipe with water flowing through it at a rate of 1000 gallons per minute, would you say that the water is flowing quickly or slowly? How about if I tell you that the pipe is 1" in diameter? How about 200" in diameter?
Let's expand on that a bit. But first I will indulge your questions...
If told water was flowing at 1000gpm with no other information, I would say the water is flowing quite fast (I compared the given rate with that of typical household capabilities at the "without thought" level of brain activity
and at the same time [and in the same method] knew that I have been in industrial environments that this rate of water transfer was commonplace).
If you included the info that it was the output of a 1" pipe I would say it was flowing super, super, super fast.
If you said it was the output of a 200" pipe, I would say that's a pretty big pipe
...but to answer your question, though, I would still say the water is flowing fast.
Now to expand, the same is true of electrical current in a wire. For a given rate of "charge flow", current travels faster in a small conductor than it does in a large one.
Again let's use the water analogy... (I promise I will do my best to curtail such after this
)
Say you have a process pipe of substantial length that is full of water with closed valves at both ends. One end is connected to a pressurized water supply that will push 1000gpm out the other end of the pipe when both valves are open. You open the valve at the supply end. You open the valve at the discharge end for exactly 1/1000 of a minute and exactly one gallon is discharged.
Is the discharged gallon of water the same gallon of water that entered the supply end?
What is the relative time difference between water entering the supply end of the pipe and the water being discharged at the other end? This answer need not be precise.
Was the rate of water flow through the pipe the answer to the previous question or something else? Please explain if the latter.
