Capacitors, what are they? A Guide For Beginners

Capacitors, formerly called diffuse, are passive electrical components that are used to "storage electricity" in the form of electrical charges. There are many different types of capacitors, from very small capacitor beads used in resonant circuits to large power factor correction capacitors, but they all do the same thing and store charge.

The simplest type of capacitor has two parallel conductive plates separated by a fine dielectric called a dielectric. This insulating layer prevents DC current from flowing through the capacitor so that there is the voltage across the plates as a charge instead. These conductive plates are either circular, rectangular, or cylindrical in shape, and the dielectric layer is air, wax paper, plastic, or a form of the liquid gel used in electrolytic capacitors.

Types Of Capacitors

There are two types of charges: a positive charge in the form of protons and a negative charge in the form of electrons. When a voltage is applied across a capacitor, a positive charge rapidly builds up on one plate, and a corresponding negative charge builds up on the other, and each time a positive particle of charge reaches one plate, the same signal charge moves away from the negative plate. This charge then determines a potential difference between the two plates so that the plates remain charge neutral. The amount of potential difference present across a capacitor depends on the amount of charge stored in the plates due to the work done by the supply voltage and the capacitance of the capacitor.

Capacitance is an electrical property of a capacitor and is a measure of a capacitor's ability to store charge in its plates. When a voltage is applied between two plates of the capacitor, there is a positive charge on one plate and a negative charge on the other plate. Then the value of the capacitor's capacitance is equal to the amount of charge divided by the voltage across the capacitor.

The capacitance of a capacitor is equal to the ratio of the charge of each plate to the applied voltage, but it also depends on the physical size and the distance between the two conduction plates. For example, for two plates where a larger plate or multiple plates are used, higher capacitance values ​​give more surface area for charges to accumulate. Similarly, if the distance between the two plates is close or different types of insulators are used, more charges will be generated and the capacitance will be higher. The capacitance of a capacitor can also be described by its physical size, the distance (spacing) between the two plates, and the type of dielectric used.

Ideal Capacitors

An ideal capacitor has very high dielectric resistance and zero plate resistance. This causes the charge between the plates to remain constant indefinitely once the supply voltage is removed. However, true capacitors have leakage current through the insulator between the two plates. The amount of leakage current in the capacitor depends on the leakage resistance of the dielectric medium used. Also, an ideal capacitor does not lose any power provided by the supply voltage, as it is stored in the form of an electric field between the two plates, while in a true capacitor, this leakage current and plate resistance is lost due to.

The symbolic representation of a capacitor in an electrical circuit is two parallel lines above the top plate separated by a small gap with a positive sign if the capacitor is of the polarized type. Like resistors, capacitors can be connected to each other in many ways, either in series, in parallel, or a combination of the two. In parallel combination, the potential difference across each capacitor is the same as the source voltage, and each capacitor stores charge. The total of the stored fees is equal to the sum of all individual fees. The charge and voltage across the parallel group are the same, so the total capacitance is the sum of the individual capacitances. By connecting capacitors in parallel, very high capacitance values ​​can be obtained from small individual capacitors.

Conclusion

For a group of series capacitors, the charging current across the capacitors is the same, so the magnitude of the charge is the same across all plates. Dividing by the total amplitude gives the total amplitude as the reciprocal of all the individual amplitudes. By connecting capacitors in series, the equivalent capacitance is less than the capacitance of the smallest value capacitor.

I hope this short beginner's guide to capacitors tutorials will be useful to anyone new to the world of electronics, whether as a hobbyist or as a student trying to learn electronics.

Location: Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan

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