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I am very confused about voltage in short circuit.

Let's suppose there is a 6 volt battery and both ends of it are connected with the same wire and it's short-circuited.

Then because resistance of wire is 0 (negligible) so by the formula V=IR the voltage across ends of the battery will be 0.

But then where does the 6 volts applied by the battery go?

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    \$\begingroup\$ It's important to think about whether you are considering a real circuit, or an idealized model, and if so what kind of model. In the standard idealized circuit model that we normally talk about, a direct short circuit across a voltage source, with 0 resistance, simply does not make sense to talk about. It's not possible (for the reason you say.) In any real circuit, this paradox is resolved because the wires have resistance, and the battery has resistance, and the voltage is distributed across those resistances. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jun 27, 2023 at 20:42

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The voltage is still there. You're thinking with ideal components - perfect voltage sources with no internal resistance and wires with no resistance. Ideal components can give you strange, impossible answers when you do things like short out supplies or connect them in parallel. In the real world, batteries and wires have resistances (and inductances and capacitances) since they're generally not made with superconducting materials. A standard 6V lantern battery has an internal resistance of ~1 ohm and 1' or 30cm of 20 AWG/0.5mm^2 wire has a resistance of about 10 milliohms so your short circuit would look something like this:

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab

And you'd end up with Isc of 5.94 A with 5.94 V dropped across the internal resistance of the battery and 0.0594 V across your wire, which is also the terminal voltage of the battery.

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There is internal resistance in the battery, and a small but not zero resistance in the wire. The battery may be unable to supply the resulting high current, which causes its voltage to significantly decrease under the load. Whatever power it can sustain will be dissipated as heat. The wire, the battery, or both, will become hot. If the sustained heat is not enough to cause a failure, the whole system will effectively become a little heat-producing circuit. If the produced heat is more than one component can withstand, a failure will occur. Failure could be as dramatic as an exploding battery or melting conductor that could start a fire, or as uneventful as the battery discharging and the heat produced not being sustained. It all depends on the capacity of the battery and the size of wire forming the short.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ A low internal resistance battery like a tractor or lorry starter battery and a low-resistance short like an accidentally placed or dropped spanner or screw driver can make for some really spectacular failures involving melting metal. Apropos: welding transformers also have very low internal resistance so that external "shorts" convert into welding spots. Fortunately, most voltage sources in practice have higher internal resistance. \$\endgroup\$
    – user107063
    Commented Jun 27, 2023 at 19:30
  • \$\begingroup\$ @user107063: that is true of spot-welding transformers. GMAW (stick) and TIG welding sets are designed to deliver constant current, MIG welding sets are more constant-voltage, but AFAIK are still current limited to some extent (or you'd just melt the wire in the feed tube the first time you screwed up). \$\endgroup\$
    – TimWescott
    Commented Jun 27, 2023 at 23:04
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Well in an ideal case you are correct, there is no way the voltage will dissappear, current will be infinity and a black hole is created, this is the problem of edge cases in our mathematical modeling in electrical circuits that assumes perfection, same issue is thier in an RC circuit for example (connecting a resistor in series with capacitor) if resistance is zero, current at first second is infinity and capacitor is charged in zero time; A black hole will pop out of existance, but in the real case there is always resistance of wires and even internal resistance of battery it self.

So back to your simple wires shorting the battery, their has to be some resistance that drops the voltage.

Also check something called thevinin equivalent it is a really handy way of describing any circuit and always have a resistance in series that causes the voltage to actually drop mathematically. This has really cool applications for maximum power transfer and other stuff.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Are you saying that there's a model of electric circuits which predicts that short-circuiting a voltage source will literally create a black hole? \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jun 28, 2023 at 3:57
  • \$\begingroup\$ @CassieSwett My statement is simply that infinite current (predicted with good old ohm's law) causes black holes, look at the current equation in a conductor, $I = enAv$, the only way it approaches infinity is by velocity being infinity, and if you googled special relativity, infinite speed means each single electron weighs infinite amount of kilograms (the equation is kinda easy you can try yourself!), at last having infinite mass means that the thing will collapse into itself, creating a black hole. This of course assumes that many things hold true but at the speed of light ;) \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jun 28, 2023 at 8:51
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    \$\begingroup\$ I suppose that sounds pretty reasonable. Note that by the same sort of reasoning, an ideal voltage source must contain an infinite amount of energy, and therefore an infinite amount of mass, meaning that it'll collapse into an infinitely massive black hole before you even have the chance to connect anything to it. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jun 28, 2023 at 12:24
  • \$\begingroup\$ @CassieSwett XD can't disagree, you're right \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jun 28, 2023 at 15:05
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A battery holds charge chemically which means there is a barrier that separates positive and negative ions similar to a capacitor. Different batteries have different types of barriers and chemistry.

When the terminals of a battery are connected to each other (shorted,) the electrons flow to the other side through the wire making the voltage difference between the terminals to 0 same as a capacitor.

The time it takes to reach the 0 volt state depends on the maximum discharge current of the battery.

In theory, if you short circuit a voltage source the current would be infinite to maintain the same supply voltage. That is not possible in practice. When an actual power supply or a battery is shorted, very high current flows for very short time. Afterwards, if it is a battery then it would be fully discharged (probably damaged too,) or if it is some sort of power supply then the fuse would be popped, or the supply would be cut-off because of short-circuit protection, or some components in the supply would be blown because it couldn't handle the large current.

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