Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-2-paper-of-the-university-of-oxford/2015-resit/9/a/solution

Label the capacitor's left terminal and right terminal , with the battery's negative node at zero. The source diagram has from to ground, from to ground, and a source-side resistor feeding from electric potential difference . The capacitor electric current flows from to ; flows through .
With the capacitor removed, and , so the Thévenin equivalent seen by the capacitor has . Suppress the ideal electric potential difference source to find its electrical resistance: the left terminal sees to ground and the right sees , giving between the terminals.
The initially uncharged capacitor electric potential difference therefore obeys
Solving gives , with . The capacitor electric current is , hence
At , the short-like uncharged capacitor makes , so directly from the right resistor. At long times the capacitor carries no direct electric current. These endpoint checks agree with the exponential solution.

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