Faraday-Lenz's law was easy when I was in 12th standard. But it became more complex when I jumped to Engineering. Recently when I was studying about inductors and how they oppose changes in currents, I found out that Faraday-Lenz's Law becomes little weird because based on my observation I found out that this law "doesn't work" (frankly speaking)! Here's the story behind my observation:
Suppose you have an AC voltage source of 240 volts peak and 60 Hz frequency connected to an inductor of 10 mH inductance (wire's resistance is negligible so that the impedance is only due to the reactance of the inductor). Now if I switch on the Ac supply, it is found out that the voltage across the inductor is 240 volt peak and the reactance and current through it is 3.7699 ohms and 63.6622 amps peak. The voltage polarity is as shown.
simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab
Now if we apply Kirchoff's Voltage Law to this circuit, it works as expected. But then I don't seem to understand that 'how' this inductor opposes current. Because in my opinion if the inductor opposes current then the polarity markings on the inductor should be reversed then only we can say it generates a back emf. But then the Kirchoff's Voltage Law would not work if the polarity markings are reversed.
Now I think I didn't understood the topic of how inductors oppose currents in an AC circuit.
And also if it generates a back emf to generate a back current then where is the back emf and the back current and why it does not affect the voltage across the inductor and the current through it?
Best Answer
My favorite mental model of the inductor is a flywheel. Force is voltage, current is velocity, and inductance is mass. A flywheel resists changes in speed, as an inductor resists changes in current.
You are probably familiar with Newton's second law, which states that force equals mass times acceleration:
$$ F = ma \tag{1} $$
Acceleration is really change in velocity, so we can write that equivalently as:
$$ F = m \frac{\mathrm dv}{\mathrm dt} \tag{2} $$
That's oddly similar to the definition of inductance:
$$ v = L \frac{\mathrm di}{\mathrm dt} \tag{3} $$
I find keeping this analogy in mind when thinking about inductors makes things more intuitive.
Now, you have an inductor connected to a voltage source. An AC voltage source is analogous to a machine that applies a force in one direction, then the other, in alternation. Remember that it applies a force, but the direction the flywheel is spinning, the current, is unrestricted. At any given moment, the flywheel might be spinning in the direction of the applied force, in the opposite direction, or not at all.
Now, consider what happens at each point in the AC cycle:
In fact, current is increasing for the entire time that voltage is positive. It's increasing fastest when voltage is at the maximum. By the time voltage gets to 0, current has stopped increasing, but current is by now at a maximum, having been increasing for the entire preceding voltage half-cycle.
When voltage crosses the zero point and begins to go negative, the effect is to begin to decrease current, to "slow down the flywheel". Eventually current reaches zero, then begins to go in the other direction. Eventually voltage reverses polarity, and the current begins to be slow, and its direction reversed, and so on.
With a bit of math, you can substitute \$v = \sin(t)\$ into equation 3, and you find that \$i = \cos(t)\$, as in the bottom figure here:
Now when you have a larger inductance, that's like a heavier flywheel. If the same voltage (force) is applied to it, then it's harder to get spinning fast. That is, the current is less. That is how inductors oppose AC currents.
Lenz's law is even more intuitive. Suppose you came across a big, heavy, fast spinning flywheel, and you tried to force its speed to zero by grabbing it. The flywheel will push you in some direction, right? This is the "back emf". It is what you get for \$v\$ in equation 3 if you force \$\mathrm di / \mathrm dt\$ to be non-zero.
Lenz's law simply says which direction the shove happens. If you ignore Lenz's law and get the direction wrong, then it becomes possible to create a perpetual motion machine.