question regarding the boundary behavior of electric current

Hi,

I have a cable and I send electric current through it. I want to know the moment when the current has arrived at the other end of the cable.

Can I visualize this moment by using an oscilloscope ?

If the answer is yes, I have another question for a more complex experiment.

I have a very simple network with 2 nodes (A and B). There are 2 cables which are connecting these nodes. The cables have different lengths L1 and L2. Assume that L1 is shorter than L2.

I have draw a small picture here:

--A*-------L1---------*B-- | | | | |______L2_____|

I apply electric power to this device. Because the cables have lengths greater than zero I assume that it will take a while until the current traverse the path from A to B.

More than that, in node A, the current is split in 2, because there are 2 cables linking A with B. Because one of the cables is shorter I assume that "a part" of the current arrives earlier (denote this by moment M1) than the other "part" because it has to traverse a shorter path. Am I correct ?

The other "part" of the current which has traversed cable L2 will arrive later in B. Lets denote this by moment M2.

Can I measure these 2 moments by using an oscilloscope? Or what other options for measurement I have ?

Are there some fluctuations of the electric current at moments M1 and M2 ?

Are there high precision oscilloscopes for this experiment? Or should I use very very long cables?

I'm not interested what happens after those moments.

Thanks, Laura

Reply to
laura
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the current wavefront passes down the cable at a speed that is a significant fraction of the speed of light.

you can if your scope is fast enough and your cables are long enough.

yes.

if you've got a 100Mhz oscilloscope you'd be wanting cables about 20m and

40m long to get reasonably clear results.

if it's slower use longer cables.

when you're done if you're able take some photos of the scope trace etc and post them to alt.binaries.schematics.electronics

Bye. Jasen

Reply to
jasen

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