Why electric current doesn’t decrease for each wire i connect to a battery?

Question

For example, if i have a battery with 10V of power, and then i connect a wire to the battery it will have 10A of current in it.

If i connect 2 wires, why current doesn’t split between the two wires so that i have 5A in each one?

I have no knowledge in this area, the only logical conclusion i can come to with the little information i have is that both wires will have 10A of current because both will “work at full potential”, but then, the battery will run out of power at double the speed compared to having only 1 wire connected.

Is my guess correct or the solution is another one?

Thanks in advance.

In: 1

Answer 1

Real life 10V batteries don’t actually provide 10V under all circumstances. They only do it until they reach their power limit, after which they start to drop voltage. If you read the label on a battery, it will say something like “10V, 1A”, which means “the battery will provide 10V, but only if the current is no more than 1A”.

If you connect a wire to a 10V, 1A battery, and the current is 0.5A, that means the battery is working at 50% power. It cannot work more because the wire is the bottleneck. If you connect a second wire, the battery would work at 100% power, and the current will be 1A (0.5A for each wire). But connecting third wire won’t give you 1.5A, instead the voltage will drop to 8.2V and the current will be 1.2A (0.4A for each wire).