I’ve always been skeptical of very simple models to describe large behaviors, but in my first EE labs classes I was astounded at how well a very simple superposition of functions described empirical measurements.
Funny that you mention it, as I remember performing high school physics experiments with discharging a battery (not a capacitor), and due to heating there was very significant deviation from exponential decay—as battery discharges power, it heats up, and it changes it resistance. That’s more 10% kind of error than order of magnitude kind of error. (with a capacitor heating will more likely occur inside the load than inside the capacitor, but you might get similar effect)
And of course properties near complete discharge will be very different, what should be very clear on a log-log plot.
A discharging capacitor is a pretty good fit for exponential decay. (At least, until it’s very very close to being completely discharged.)
This is consistent with my experience...
I’ve always been skeptical of very simple models to describe large behaviors, but in my first EE labs classes I was astounded at how well a very simple superposition of functions described empirical measurements.
Funny that you mention it, as I remember performing high school physics experiments with discharging a battery (not a capacitor), and due to heating there was very significant deviation from exponential decay—as battery discharges power, it heats up, and it changes it resistance. That’s more 10% kind of error than order of magnitude kind of error. (with a capacitor heating will more likely occur inside the load than inside the capacitor, but you might get similar effect)
And of course properties near complete discharge will be very different, what should be very clear on a log-log plot.