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[asterysk]

This is kind of a chicken and egg query !

Imagine a battery and there is a wire attached to - terminal via a switch
also imagine the wire is a perfect conductor (no losses)


Lets assume we can somehow magically detect the voltage at the end of the wire (the end away from the cell) , by magically I mean without creating a closed circuit back to the cell

With switch open , voltage on end of wire is 0

with switch closed , what is the voltage on end of wire ? (assuming it is not made a closed circuit with a voltmeter)

is it 0 until the wire is made closed circuit or is it cell terminal voltage ?

I am thinking that when the switch is closed, the electrons will flow (by flow I mean drift and nudge adjacent electrons) until there is a surplous at the end of the wire which creates the potential , however, there is also the possibility that the electrons do not flow because the wire is open circuit, my physics isn't good enough to work this one out

In case you are wondering, this definitely has to do with antenna design, I'm working on a possibly more intuitive way of understanding a dipole but its very early stages so far and I'm trying to get a handle on the basics first