- #1
fluidistic
Gold Member
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I've asked myself the following question but couldn't think about an answer.
Imagine a hypothetical situation : you have a very large (more than [tex]10^{10}m[/tex]) circuit that contains only a wire (with no resistor) and an emf. Now you turn on the emf... will the current be the same in the whole circuit? Or will the current be null at very a large distance initially while close the emf the current would be theoretically infinite since there's no resistor?
So that you can't apply Kirchhoff's current law in very large circuits when the situation is not yet stationary.
Equivalently one can imagine a situation of a human size circuit but with very small time (less than say [tex]10^{-12}s[/tex]).
I'd like to know what really happens, just to understand better how the universe really work, it's not a homework question.
Thanks.
Imagine a hypothetical situation : you have a very large (more than [tex]10^{10}m[/tex]) circuit that contains only a wire (with no resistor) and an emf. Now you turn on the emf... will the current be the same in the whole circuit? Or will the current be null at very a large distance initially while close the emf the current would be theoretically infinite since there's no resistor?
So that you can't apply Kirchhoff's current law in very large circuits when the situation is not yet stationary.
Equivalently one can imagine a situation of a human size circuit but with very small time (less than say [tex]10^{-12}s[/tex]).
I'd like to know what really happens, just to understand better how the universe really work, it's not a homework question.
Thanks.