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Re: Capacitor energy experiment



"RAUBER, JOEL" wrote:

Bob,

Does the answer to question depend upon saying the energy resides in the
fields and not the charge?

Joel R

Ok - so far so good - you agree that the energy stored in the
capacitor is 1/2
CV^2. Now, since the energy resides in the field, not in the
charges, what
possible set of circumstances could have the energy stored in
an identical
capacitor with the same charge and voltage to be anything
except 1/2 CV^2 -
regardless of how it was charged - dissipatively or non-dissipatively?

For the capacitor, excluding mechanical deformation energy losses, etc., the
energy is in the field - the electrons cannot store energy internally - they
are point objects. Others on the list have calculated the thermal KE
associated with the electrons themselves and it was negligible compared to
1/2 CV^2.

The point is that if the energy is in the field, and if two IDENTICAL
capacitors have the same fields, they must have the same energy. So if one
has 1/2 CV^2, then so must all others, regardless of the charging mechanism.
The value CV^2 is not an option.

Bob at PC