Comment on ‘The most energy efficient way to charge the capacitor in a RC circuit’

Abstract

In a recent paper, Wang (2017 Phys. Educ. 52 065019), a comparison was made between the efficiency in charging a capacitor (C) in series with a resistor (R) using either a voltage source or a constant current source. The paper concluded that using a current source was more efficient. We show that this is not correct when the energy loss within the current source is considered. It is also shown that the energy loss is not dependent on the charging rate. A formal proof using calculus and simpler graphical arguments are presented.