Connect an ideal battery across two end of a superconductor?

[anhnha]

Hi,
What will happen if I connect an ideal battery across two ends of a superconductor?
Assume all contacts are ideal, lossless.
Is the current infinitive?

 

[voko]

What is an ideal battery? The one whose internal resistance is zero?

 

[anhnha]

What is an ideal battery? The one whose internal resistance is zero?

Yes.

 

[Drakkith]

Mathematically, sure.
Just realize that this is impossible in the real world.

 

[voko]

Then the current will grow till the magnetic field becomes so strong that the superconductor will stop being a superconductor, or is torn apart by mechanical stress from the growing magnetic field, whichever happens first.

 

[Drakkith]

There's also the fact that it isn't possible to have a battery with 0 resistance. Even with a resistance close to zero, the battery would discharge so fast it would explode. It is using a chemical reaction to generate electricity, after all.

 

[voko]

An ideal battery cannot be chemical almost by definition. There are in fact special-purpose generators with very low internal resistance that can generate huge currents, albeit for very brief periods of time. I guess we could imagine this "ideal battery" is such a generator.

 

[Drakkith]

Well, then it wouldn't be a battery at all, would it?
I'm curious as to how they even generate current in a superconductor normally. Is it induced somehow? But perhaps that is a question for another thread.

 

[anhnha]

Hi,
For example, assuming that we have the battery ideal with no internal resistance and all contacts, wires are ideal (no resistance).
Then, theoretically, the voltage/current across/through two ends of the wire is indeterminate, right?
And this configuration even impossible in theory.

 

[voko]

No. There will always be certain effects that make this impossible. An example was given in #5.

 

[Dale]

This is merely a modern version of the "unstoppable force against an immovable object" paradox.

There is no such thing as an ideal battery. There are superconductors, but even those can only support a finite current density before they cease being superconducting. Both of those realities will prevent infinite current.