Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!mit-amt!mit-caf!ankleand
From: ankleand@mit-caf.MIT.EDU (Andrew Karanicolas)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Meta HV Cap Fun!
Message-ID: <2487@mit-caf.MIT.EDU>
Date: 9 Jun 89 20:08:02 GMT
References: <4924@m2c.M2C.ORG> <3806@mit-amt> <20772@quacky.mips.COM> <166@mother.dde.uucp> <956@maestro.htsa.aha.nl> <682@uvicctr.UVic.ca.UUCP>
Reply-To: ankleand@mit-caf.UUCP (Andrew Karanicolas)
Organization: Microsystems Technology Laboratories, MIT
Lines: 28


>This puzzle has been beaten to death.  There is no puzzle now, nor was
>there one 30 years ago when I first heard it.  There are no perfect
>conductors, or capacitors, or inductors.  The capacitors wind up at 5
>volts, and the extra energy goes into heat and em radiation.  Let's
>kill it!

Beaten to death?  Hardly.  Most of the responses I have seen have missed 
the point entirely.  You can model the loss any way you want, and a lot of
people have done so correctly, but I have yet to see anyone else explain why 
the ideal situation breaks down.  The original question has not been answered,
instead, its assumptions were modified so that a tractable problem is possible.
At this risk of being arrogant, I find this approach to solving problems 
annoying.  The real solution to the ideal problem depends on one understanding,
or at least appreciating, some of the theory of Dirac delta distributions.  
The 'capacitor problem' has been solved for a long time, there are a few good 
books out there on electric circuit theory that treat problems like this 
correctly.  If anyone is interested, I would gladly send e-mail to them 
describing the solution or direct them to books where the solution is
explained.

Andy Karanicolas



MIT Microsystems Laboratory
ankleand@caf.mit.edu
ankleand@charon.mit.edu