Re: [Phys-l] energy to charge a capacitor and stored energy

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

On 08/23/2008 06:46 AM, sridhar chitta wrote:
> I use a 1V battery to charge a capacitor of capacity 1.602x10raised to -19
> Farad (1.602x10raised to -19 coulomb is the electric charge of a single
> electron).
> What is the energy spent by the battery and the energy stored in the
> capacitor ?

1) If you can build and operate the apparatus as described, then the
 battery delta energy is QV and the capacitor delta energy is 1/2 QV.

2) This result is independent of the magnitude-scale of Q and the
 magnitude-scale of V ... still provided that you can build and
 operate the apparatus as described.

3) Why is this even a question?  Are we supposed to question whether
 the laws of electrostatics remain valid on the scale of single
 atoms?  A lot of atomic physicists would have a hard time taking
 that hypothesis seriously, since there's rather a lot of data on
 this already.