Some hefty circuit!

Find the value of I . I.


The answer is 0.5.

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2 solutions

Carsten Meyer
Apr 24, 2021

First find the equivalent resistance between A A and B B . By symmetry, all nodes on the middle diagonal must have the same potential, so we can connect them all without changing voltages/currents. The resulting network consists of two identical triangle networks in series, so we only need to consider the top one.

Again by symmetry, currents on the left of the triangle must equal currents on the right of the triangle: we may split the triangle in half and have two identical networks in parallel. Again, we only need to consider one of them. This is what we are left with:

We calculate the equivalent resistance between nodes A and M via nodal analysis to get R A M = 1 + R 1 M R_{AM} = 1 + R_{1M} (see program below). Using all symmetry, we get R A B = 2 ( R A M R A M ) = R A M = 1 + R 1 M = 6385 2494 I = V R A M = 5051597 9871210 0.512 R_{AB} = 2 (R_{AM}\|R_{AM}) = R_{AM} = 1 + R_{1M}= \frac{6385}{2494}\qquad\Rightarrow\qquad I = \frac{V}{R_{AM}} = \frac{5051597}{9871210}\approx\boxed{0.512}


/* maxima program to calculate node 
voltages of simplified network  via nodal analysis */

Y : matrix(
    [3/2,  -1,   0,   0, -1/2,  0,  0,    0],
    [ -1,   3,  -1,   0,   -1,  0,  0,    0],
    [  0,   -1,  3,  -1,    0, -1,  0,    0],
    [  0,   0,  -1, 8/3,    0,  0, -1,    0],
    [-1/2, -1,   0,   0,    3, -1,  0, -1/2],
    [  0,   0,  -1,   0,   -1,  4, -1,   -1],
    [  0,   0,   0,  -1,    0, -1,  4,    0],
    [  0,   0,   0,   0, -1/2, -1,  0,  7/2]
)$

J : transpose([1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0])$

/* equivalent resistance between A and M */
R_AM : 1 + (invert(Y) . J)[1, 1];
Jon Haussmann
May 7, 2018

The effective resistance between A and B is 6385 2494 \frac{6385}{2494} , so I = 4051 / 3092 6385 / 2494 = 5051597 9871210 0.51175. I = \frac{4051/3092}{6385/2494} = \frac{5051597}{9871210} \approx 0.51175. Reference: http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhah/101/ResPap_08.pdf .

The reason I had put up the value of emf like that was that I was getting the effective resistance as 4051/1546. Maybe I was wrong. I solved it by exploiting the fact that you can disconnect two points at same potential and symmetry. By this when you disconnect the points, you get a ladder-like arrangement for which effective resistance can be calculated by ease. I guess I did a mistake somewhere.

Tapas Mazumdar - 3 years, 1 month ago

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@Tapas Mazumdar A wrong assumption may have been that all nodes on a diagonal have the same potential: If that were the case, KCL would be violated for all border nodes!

I used a mix of symmetry and nodal analysis and got the same result as Jon Haussmann (see my solution).

Carsten Meyer - 1 month, 2 weeks ago

Connect A and B with a line,easily you can find that the 6*6 squares are symmetric.So you can just work out the effective resistance of half the squares and divide it by two.More interestingly,if you have a look at the vertexs inside the big square, you can easily find that they can be equivalent to "divided".So I think the answer is 4501/1546 / 4501/3092=1/2

han lyu - 2 years, 3 months ago

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I am a Chinese and if there are some mistakes in my grammar,please forgive me(ಡωಡ)

han lyu - 2 years, 3 months ago

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