Wait, what? It's linear, and it only applies to capacitors. Batteries are a comp...

ricw · on March 22, 2020

Divided by distance^2 - looks inverted exponential to me.

It does apply to spooled batteries, which is pretty much most modern batteries but most importantly Li-ion batteries

adwn · on March 22, 2020

> Divided by distance^2 - looks inverted exponential to me.

Quadratic growth is very, very different from exponential growth – both from a theoretical as well as a practical perspective.

thfuran · on March 22, 2020

What you've linked has essentially nothing to do with the discussion. What the person who replied to you thought you were talking about was the equation for energy stored in a capacitor, which is proportional to inverse of distance.

ricw · on March 22, 2020

It absolutely has. It’s basic physics and it definitely applies to batteries or in fact any static charges, which is what is being discussed.

nitrogen · on March 22, 2020

I'm not a physicist, but my understanding is that batteries do not use the electric field at all to store charge, unlike a capacitor. Batteries use chemical reactions to move electrons, not static electric charge.

klyrs · on March 22, 2020

> Divided by distance^2 - looks inverted exponential to me.

As stated in the Wikipedia article you linked to, that's an inverse-square law. That's a far cry from inverse-exponential.

marcosdumay · on March 22, 2020

The force is proportional to distance^-2, the resulting energy is proportional to distance^-1.