Recent content by Vellyr

I think I get it. There are no elements in the circuit, so nearly all of the voltage drops across the internal resistance of the battery and there is zero delta-v at any two points along the wire. So say you have a battery with the terminals wired directly to one another. Will a voltmeter...

OK, but then why is V very small? My intuition says that V across the entire circuit should be constant and equal to the emf (for an ideal battery). When you take a wire and connect the terminals of a battery, why do you only get a tiny voltage? Isn't the voltage determined by the distribution...

I've searched around and all I can find are people quoting the equations. I see it in the math, but it seems contradictory. Here is my line of thought: 1. A source maintains a voltage difference across its terminals. 2. The difference in voltage causes charge to flow from higher to lower...

Thank you for your reply. So if you have a battery in the circuit, the voltage/electric field can't go down and therefore the charge goes up instead? I think I was confusing capacitance with actual energy stored in the capacitor.

So I basically understand the C = ε0(A/d) formula. Larger area means there is room for more electrons, smaller d means larger E field, which pulls electrons onto the opposite plate more strongly. What's tripping me up is when dielectrics come into the picture. When a dielectric is inserted, the...