Explaining an Electromagnetics Brainteaser with Simulation
There was a video that generated a lot of buzz online because it featured a popular electromagnetics brainteaser. Simply put, the brainteaser asks: "When you close the switch in a circuit — consisting of a battery, light bulb, and pair of wires — how long will it take for the light bulb to light up?"
However, the more interesting question is: what happens to the signal through the bulb over time? That is a lot more complicated, and to answer that, we can build a model using the COMSOL Multiphysics® software.
In this video, we go over how to set up a model of a long loop of wire connected to a source and a receiver, which are placed 1 meter apart. The model's objective is to compute how long it takes for the receiver to sense when the source is turned on, and to compute the current over time.
Next Steps
- Read about this classic electromagnetics problem on the COMSOL Blog
- Check out and download the related tutorial model in the Application Gallery