system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Regarding the physics of lightning and electricity.

What causes a bolt of lightning to form so rapidly, in the order of microseconds, when the drift velocity of the electrons carrying the charge is in the order of meters per hour? Furthermore, how does such a high potential difference equalize so rapidly if the electrons are moving so slowly?
gpt
In general, when current flows, the electrons that come out at one end aren't the same electrons that went in at the other, they're electrons that were already in the conductor and were pushed out. You can think of it like a tube completely packed full of marbles, but open on either end. At one end of the tube, you push another marble in, and it pushes the marbles in front of it, which push the marbles in front of them, down the line until it gets to the other end, where one marble falls out. None of the marbles were moving very quickly, yet the signal was transferred almost instantaneously.