Capacitor and 1 British Pound MAGNET

[babushka]

Hi guys. I've got an interesting questions. I found it tricky maybe somebody knows the answer. When I attach to DC supply a capacitor with a coin 1 British Pound parallel to the capacitor and connected by two wires coming out of the capacitor, I always get kind of sparkles in my coin, the supply gets hot and suddenly these two wires from the capacitor become a magnet which can easily lift my pound up as a real magnet. Explain it please.

 

[rbelli1]

It appears you are shorting the current from the power supply and capacitor through the coin. You can get quite large instantaneous currents out of a capacitor. The "magnetic force" you see is not actually magnetism. You have simply welded the coin to the wires.

The supply is getting hot because you are dissipating most of the energy from the supply inside the supply itself as the internal resistance of the supply is much larger than the coin. Power is current squared times resistance. The coin has a rather small resistance.

BoB