A capacitor is charged up to before being attached to an inductor to form an LC oscillator. What is the charge on the capacitor when the inductor reaches half of its maximum current?
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The oscillator circuit can be modeled via KVL according to:
0 = L q ′ ′ ( t ) + C 1 q ′ ( t ) , q ( 0 ) = 1 0 , q ′ ( 0 ) = 0 (i)
which has the general solution:
q ( t ) = A cos ( t / L C ) + B sin ( t / L C ) (ii)
and after applying the boundary conditions in (i) to (ii), we finally obtain:
q ( t ) = 1 0 cos ( t / L C ) (iii),
i ( t ) = q ′ ( t ) = ( − 1 0 / L C ) sin ( t / L C ) (iv).
From (iv), 2 i M A X = L C 5 ⇒ L C 5 = ( − 1 0 / L C ) sin ( t / L C ) ⇒ t / L C = arcsin ( − 1 / 2 ) = − π / 6 . Thus, the capacitor's charge at this instance of time computes to q = 1 0 cos ( − π / 6 ) = 1 0 ( 3 / 2 ) = 5 3 coloumbs.