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A circuit has just 1 capacitor and a DC Battery (V volts) and the wire has no resistance. At time $t=0$ the capacitor is completely uncharged. How current in this circuit changes with time?

What i think

At t=0, Voltage at plate of capacitor ($V_c$) =0, so voltage difference is $V-V_c=V$ so current at t=0, $i_o$= $\frac{V-V_c }{R}=$tends to infinite; since R=0, since current tends to becomes too large the capacitor is expected to blast, but lets assume its a blast-proof capacitor then the current is expected to just charge the capacitor, now i think this large current can charge the capacitor in an instant which brings us to time t=t1.

At t=t1, the capacitor is charged to some degree such that potential at its plates is $V_{c_{t1}}$ still current $i_{t1}$= $\frac{V-V_{c_{t1}}}{R}$ tends to infinity but at a slower rate than before. The charging of capacitor continues.

At t=t2, the capacitor is 99.9999...% charged and potential at its plate is $V_{c_{t2}}$ ~ V. Here current is still increasing though very very slow so that 1)the increase might be considered 0 so current becomes constant at $i_{t2}$ OR 2) the increase is not equivalent to 0 in which case i can't think what would happen.


But by a comment on my previous question, the current should tend to 0 when time tends to infinity. But how does that work, i can't see a single reason responsible for current to decrease and how my reasing above is wrong.

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3 Answers 3

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Playing with infinities often leads to strange results.

The circuit that you describe is unnatural so it cannot directly be analysed other that giving results which include infinities.
As described the capacitor will be charged to the voltage if the battery, $V$, instantaneously with the passage of an infinite current for that "period" of time!

One way to analyse the circuit is to add a series resistor with a resistance $R$ in the circuit and then see what happens as $R\to 0$.

Another way is to note that the circuit is a loop and so has inductance and analyse the behaviour of the circuit with some inductance (and some resistance).

Changing the circuit so that one had a constant current source rather than a constant voltage source with no resistance or inductance leads to a situation in which the voltage across the capacitor increases linearly with time but without limit.


What happens is that the current pulse gets larger in terms of magnitude and shorter in terms of time with the area (equivalent to charge) under the current-time graph staying the same as shown below.

enter image description here

Note as the resistance decreases in value by a factor of ten, the current increases by a factor of ten and the time decreases by a factor of ten so the area under the graph (the charge on the capacitor) stays constant.

Spinning Numbers simulation - Click on the $\fbox{TRAN}$ button.


Another factor which perhaps needs to be included is the switching on of the voltage supply which in the real world cannot be done instantaneously.


As a Mathematical exercise given the limitations of the assumptions from the real world situation, the switching on of the voltage supply can be modeled using the step function and then an amount of charge using the area of a Dirac delta function is dumped on the capacitor.
This is a way of setting up the initial conditions of a system.
So in this case the switch is closed and a charge

So it boils down to this.
The situation can be analyses in the real world but assumptions like zero resistance, zero inductance, zero time for voltage source to be switched on, etc, need to be loosened.

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  • $\begingroup$ assuming there is a resistance(R)the current in circuit is given by- $i_t= (V/R) e^{-t/RC}$. But the $lim (R ->0) i_t$ doesn't seem solvable... $\endgroup$
    – SHINU_MADE
    Commented Apr 27 at 7:57
  • $\begingroup$ What happens is that the current pulse gets larger in terms of magnitude and shorter in terms of time with the area (equivalent to charge) under the current-time graph staying the same. I have added to my answer to illustrate this. $\endgroup$
    – Farcher
    Commented Apr 27 at 8:35
  • $\begingroup$ @ThePhoton Sorry, I made a mistake which I have now corrected. Thanks for spotting. Old age is no fun! $\endgroup$
    – Farcher
    Commented Apr 27 at 21:50
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In your circuit, we cannot use $i=\frac{\Delta V}{R}$ because there is no resistor in the circuit. That equation can only be used if there is a resistive element. What we have is a capacitor, so we have to use its equations. We have to use $C=\frac{Q}{V}$. Or perhaps better to avoid divide by zeros, we can reaarange it as $Q=VC$

This means that in your truly DC case, the only valid value for $Q$, the charge, is $VC$. In other words, it is impossible for the capacitor to be discharged. The question is fundamentally ill formed. The capacitor simply cannot be unchanged at t=0. There is no circuit to make sense of.

That being said, there is a related circuit that you are probably thinking of. This is a circuit with a SPDT (single pole, double throw) switch in it such that for all negative times ($t < 0$), the terminals of the capacitor are shorted together, and for all non-negative times ($t \ge 0$), the terminals of the capacitor are held at a fixed voltage by an ideal voltage source. This is not DC, it's circuit with a step function in it. But it's probably pretty close to what you were thinking.

In this case, we can analyze the circuit. At all times $t < 0$, there's 0V across the capacitor (shorting the capacitor). In this case, it is quite obvious that $Q(t)=0$ for all $t<0$, thanks to the above equation $Q=VC$. How what about at $t=0$? Well, by the way I defined the problem, at $t=0$ the switch has been flipped, so there is some $V$ across the capacitor. So by the above equation, $Q(t)=VC$ for all $t\ge 0$. This is just a true statement about ideal capacitors.

Now the infinity shows up here. Current is defined to be the flow of charge over time, $i=\frac{dQ}{dt}$. It's easy to see with the above equations that $i=0$ for all $t\ne 0$. But $t=0$ is an oddity. At $t=0$, the equation for $Q$ (charge) is not continuous. The derivative is not defined there. It's not that there's no current, its that we cannot define the current.

One intuitive approach to this is to say that $i$ was "infinite," even though that's not really true because $i$ is a real number, and "infinity" is not a real number. So for a "moment" (specifically the period of time where $t=0$, there is an "infinite" current. So if we look at charge, we get a zero divided by zero. This really just says that our approach of calling $i$ "infinite" really just didn't do the job. But we can comfortably say that immediately after the whole debacle, the capacitor must be charged to exactly $Q=CV$. No other value can satisfy the equations of an ideal capacitor.

To go further than those intuitions, we can look at a few things. One thing we can look at is a RC circuit's behavior as $R$ goes to $0$, written $\lim_{R\to 0}$. This limit is useful because limits can look at where a function is going, even if the function can never get there. Farcher's answer went that way. We can see a collection of charging curves which approach the infinite peak you see. We can see that the area under each curve is the same.

We can also use Dirac Delta Functions, as ioveri answers. Direc Deltas are interesting because the formalism behind them is intense functional analysis, but the final product is a Dirac Delta Function $\delta(t)$, which while not definable in real numbers, is astonishingly well behaved. So well behaved that it's easy to forget the formalism behind them. They work great inside integrals, and often the problems you want to use them on have an integral over time.

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If you assume $R = 0$ then the capacitor will be fully charged instantly. At $t=0$, $V_c = V$, not $0$. There's no such $t_1 > 0$ for which $V_c < V$. The current is infinite at $t = 0$ and $0$ for $t > 0$, which is usually described as a Dirac Delta function. If it doesn't seem to make sense to you, it is. Because you asked for an ill-conditioned circuit in the first place

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  • $\begingroup$ Indeed thats an ill-conditioned circuit, but by your answer it seems at $t=0, i=infinite$ and at $t=0, i=0$ so current is infinite and 0 at the same time...is this even possible or its just some useless result suitable for an ill- conditioned situation. $\endgroup$
    – SHINU_MADE
    Commented Apr 27 at 15:25
  • $\begingroup$ @SHINU_MADE the current is not $0$ at $t = 0$, it is infinite. $i = 0$ for $t \neq 0$ and $i = \infty$ for $t = 0$. Check the Dirac delta function reference. Technically the Dirac Delta function is still ill-defined due to containing $\infty$ $\endgroup$
    – ioveri
    Commented Apr 27 at 15:58
  • $\begingroup$ I concluded that at $t=0, i=0$ because you said at $t=0, V_c= V$ infering from that since there is no potential difference at $t=0$ itself there would be absolutly no current, that's why i assumed current to be 0 at $t=0$. I think this coversation is going beyond what my brain can comprehend, i'm not sure if i even want an answer for this... :) but please i'd like you to put your point forward. $\endgroup$
    – SHINU_MADE
    Commented Apr 27 at 16:11
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    $\begingroup$ @SHINU_MADE technically it's up to matter of convention since you really can't apply the laws here. If you apply Fourier transform limit instead, for example, then $V_c(0) = V/2$. Rigorously, the functions $V_c(t)$ and $I_c(t)$ that strictly follow the physical laws of circuit don't exist. $\endgroup$
    – ioveri
    Commented Apr 27 at 16:23

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