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Question is the title.

An extra point would be, what would be different if now the capacitor and inductor were placed in parallel. Would it still be 0?

zoghii
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    Can you figure out when the voltage across the capacitor is at its maximum and minimum, and when the inductor current is at its maximum and minimum? Maybe if you just sketched the waveforms you would have your answer. – Elliot Alderson Jan 07 '23 at 16:12
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    Please draw the circuits you are considering to avoid ambiguity. Also show where the initial energy comes from i.e. is the capacitor initially charged or is the inductor carrying some current initially or both? – Andy aka Jan 07 '23 at 17:16
  • There isn't a circuit for this. It was just a question written as a statement on a worksheet I was doing. I understand that the voltages of the inductor and capacitor and opposite, 180° phase difference, does this mean when 1 is at its maximum the other is at its minimum? – zoghii Jan 08 '23 at 00:34

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The statement is not true in general. If the series combination is connected to a variable voltage source, then the capacitor's stored energy will not necessarily reach 0 at the same time that the inductor's stored energy reaches its maximum.

However, let's suppose that the inductor and capacitor aren't connected to anything that takes energy away from them or puts more energy into them. Then the total amount of energy that the two components have is constant: whenever one gains energy, the other one loses energy. That means that if one component reaches an energy minimum, then the other component has to reach an energy maximum at the same time.

The same is true if the components are in parallel instead of in series.

Tanner Swett
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