I bought 1000 meters of wire to settle a physics debate [video]

Here's a summary, but really you should watch the video, it is great.

Take 1km of wire, a resistor lightbulb, and a power source. Connect oscilliscope around power source. Flip switch.

For 1 light-speed delay, you actually see current going across the lightbulb! After the speed of light delay, current starts flowing normally as expected. (Why? How? Is this spooky action at a distance?)

You're actually seeing cross-talk between the wires where the build-up of electrons on the high side actually moves electrons on the (spatially) adjacent side of the loop!

Then to really complete the puzzle, sever the end of the wire. You still see the exact same behavior up to the speed-of-light time! (Which, how could you not! You need to wait a speed-of-light delay to _discover_ that the wire was severed, so you MUST see the exact same behavior.)

Controversial is fine to the extent the controversy shows people struggling toward clearer understanding and better explanations, and as long as all parties are operating in good faith (i.e. not being deliberately misleading).

Let me highly recommend Mehdi Sadaghdar’s (ElectroBOOM) excellent response video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iph500cPK28 which does a great job of empirically investigating and theoretically explaining the subtleties involved, in a polite, respectful, and entertaining way.

I have similarly enjoyed the exchange between Sadaghdar and Steve Mould about the physics of the “chain fountain”.

These kinds of friendly scientific “debates” show viewers (e.g. kids) a bit of how the scientific process and scientific discourse works, in a form that is more accessible and digestible than technical journal papers or history books.

Having a discussion back and forth helps to improve both viewers’ specific knowledge and viewers’ processes for comprehending and interrogating new information, so long as the median viewer actually sees some of the responses. (Someone who only ever saw the first Veritasium video probably ends up with a somewhat wrong mental model.)

As much as I love Veritasium, I feel the OP video is better than his. Actually doing the experiment is really good, and it honestly feels like he was fishing for another debate like the faster than wind car by giving only a super theoretical and unintuitive explanation. (I don't have any real evidence of that, but it does /feel/ like it.)

I also wonder what would happen if, instead of a setup like this:

  ┏───────light────────┓
  ┕──────battery───────┛

You did something like this:

  ┏──────────────light─┓
  ┃                    ┃
  ┃                    ┃
  ┃                    ┃
  ┃                    ┃
  ┃                    ┃
  ┃                    ┃
  ┃                    ┃
  ┃                    ┃
  ┃                    ┃
  ┕─battery────────────┛ 
  

That is, battery (and switch) and light at opposite corners of a large square, instead of on the middle of a long double-line. Veritasium video implies the current will start flowing at sqrt(2) * width, instead of at 2 * width. Would these effects really work over longer distances like this?

The resistor is next to the switch. So no information is being transmitted faster than light. It still obeys the direct line of sight speed, just not the wire speed.

Yeah, this is what im wondering. The proposed mechanism for this is that the wires generate electric fields that influence electrons remotely. Fine.

What happens when they are not close enough for any meaningful electric field interaction?