- #1
aftershock
- 110
- 0
Hi everyone,
There's something that's kind of been bugging me about applying exponential decay formulas to real world phenomena. For example let's say the discharging of a parallel plate capacitor. Let's consider the negative plate. As it discharges excess electrons leave the plate. The charge falls off exponentially and we model this mathematically by an exponential decay formula.
But wouldn't there be a time while the amount of charge leaving is less than the elementary charge? We know energy is quantized and it seems to me that the exponential decay model completely fails when we get around to the capacitor holding a charge of 1e.
There's something that's kind of been bugging me about applying exponential decay formulas to real world phenomena. For example let's say the discharging of a parallel plate capacitor. Let's consider the negative plate. As it discharges excess electrons leave the plate. The charge falls off exponentially and we model this mathematically by an exponential decay formula.
But wouldn't there be a time while the amount of charge leaving is less than the elementary charge? We know energy is quantized and it seems to me that the exponential decay model completely fails when we get around to the capacitor holding a charge of 1e.