Electrostatics & Capacitance

Consider a simple RC circuit as shown in Figure 1. Process 1 : In the circuit the switch S is closed at t = 0 and the capacitor is fully charged to voltage V 0 (i.e. charging continues for time T >> RC). In the process some dissipation (E D ) occurs across the resistance R. The amount of energy finally stored in the fully charged capacitor is E C . Process 2 : In a different process the voltage is first set to {{{V_0}} \over 3} and maintained for a charging time T >> RC. Then, the voltage is raised to {{2{V_0}} \over 3} without discharging the capacitor and again maintained for a time T >> RC. The process is repeated one more time by raising the voltage to V 0 and the capacitor is charged to the same final voltage V 0 as in Process 1. These two processes are depicted in Figure 2.