To answer Dave T first: Nope, none of us
needs to know this stuff, and yes, it's just a brain exercise. I'm not a physicist by a long shot, and I'd never heard of Fermi velocity before I started researching this. It just happened that I came across this thread at the same time I was reading about electron movement in radio antennas.
But, I've worked in electronics all my life and never given the slightest thought to the question of how fast electrons travel. Like you, I just assumed they zipped along at the speed of light. It was one of those light-bulb-going-on-over-the-head experiences to find out just how pokey they really are!
To further Radar's discussion a little, the reason why electrons are so slow in copper is that they keep colliding with copper atoms -- at the rate of some 1.9 x 10^44 collisions per second (coincidentally, the same rate as cars on Interstate 5 in Central California in heavy fog).
If they didn't collide so much, they'd be able to accelerate to much higher rates. That's apparently what makes superconductors work: with more organized atomic structures, the electrons move faster, and the resulting current is higher.
To address Dnk's question:
And if they did oscillate, this would require energy to do this. Energy in some form would have to be used up in order for the electrons to move. Is this correct?
Nope. The Earth orbits the sun at over 60,000 miles per hour and uses no energy doing it. In the same way, electrons somehow just keep orbiting those nucleii (not in elliptical orbits, but in kind of fuzzy, probabilistic shells).
That's about as far as my knowledge extends on this topic. I'll keep reading...
