Re: There's work, and then there's work

[Chuck Britton <britton@NCSSM.EDU>]

At 10:28 AM -0800 2/3/03, David Rutherford wrote:
> I don't know much about superconductivity, but shouldn't you be able
> charge the capacitor in the absence of resistance (superconducting
> circuit). Then, since the energy loss doesn't depend on R, you would
> still have to get 1/2 CV^2 for the energy stored on the capacitor. But
> where does the other 1/2 CV^2 energy go, in this case? Or maybe the
> energy stored on the capacitor in the first place is actually CV^2, not
> 1/2 CV^2, even in the presence of nonzero R.

Superconductivity gets rid of R, but R is only the real component of
the complex impedance!

The L and C components of the impedance create an LC circuit which
oscillates and radiates the 'missing' 1/2  CV^2.

Every circuit DOES have a finite (and measurable) inductance L.

We ARE getting into some interesting sidelines as we verify that
freshman physics seems to still be correct, aren't we?