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The energy lost on charging a capacitor can be easily found from the change in energy of the components of the circuit and the energy supplied by the battery.

On charging a capacitor I know that the energy loss appears as heat in the internal resistance of the battery and the wires.

But what if I take (Purely theoretically) a battery with 0 internal resistance and wires with 0 resistance?

I can't see why the capacitor won't be charged, so from the calculation there must be energy dissipated in the circuit.

So in that case, where is the heat dissipated?

Or is this ideal case faulty?

Vamsi Krishna
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1 Answers1

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When charging a capacitor the energy from the battery is transferred to the capacitor. If the wires have resistance, some of this energy is lost, i.e. dissipated. If the resistance is zero, there are no losses - but there is still the energy transfer from the battery to the capacitor.

Roger V.
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