Why is the printed conductor made in the form of a "snake"?

On printed circuit boards from computer equipment, on such boards as touchpads or motherboards, etc., you can see that the printed conductors are made in the form of a "snake" or serpentine. Why do they do this, why lengthen the conductor, because it is much easier to make the conductor short?

Of course, they do this for a reason, it's all about signal propagation in the conductor. There is a microcircuit, at the output of which there are two signals and they must arrive at the conditional receiver at the same time, but the conductors through which these signals will pass have different lengths. The signal will arrive first to the receiver with a conductor 5 cm long, with a conductor 15 cm long the signal will arrive with a delay and this will lead to poor operation of the device. To prevent this from happening, the short conductor is extended in the form of a snake, now two signals will arrive at the same time. This is also done in order to delay the signal for the required time.

TVs used to use an element called an ultrasonic delay line. It also delayed the signal for the required time. In this respect, the "snake" and ULD are somewhat similar.

At frequencies of tens of kHz, conductors of different lengths do not play a special role in signal delay. But if the frequencies reach tens and hundreds of MHz, the length of the conductors can affect the signal.

To verify this, I took a 53 MHz generator and connected an oscilloscope probe to its output. I connected another probe to the end of a 35 cm long wire, which is connected to the beginning of the generator output. First, I connected both probes to the generator output. The two signals are in the same state

Now one of the probes is connected to the end of the wire and the other remains connected to the beginning of the wire, and you can see that the yellow sine wave has shifted to the right. This means that a 35 cm long wire at 53 MHz can shift the signal.