Capacitors

Today we learned about Capacitors, which are devices that are used to store Voltage.

Here we found that the capacitance (C) in a circuit for parallel and series is the opposite of a resistor. For series, 1/C total = the inverse of the individual resistances added. For parallel, Ctotal = the summation of all the capacitance.

Here we charged a capacitor by hooking it into a circuit with a battery. Our calculation for the capacitor voltage was close to what we measured

We then saw the relationship of current and voltage of a capacitor in a circuit. As seen by the graph, as a capacitor charges, the voltage goes up, while the current goes down. The current eventually goes to zero because the voltage between the battery and the capacitor are now the same.

The last thing we did was build our own capacitor. We Found the value for k, which is the capacitance measured over what the capacitance would be if there was vacuum between the two plates, as opposed to material