Charging and Discharging Capacitors in RC Circuits

Trisha Gatdula, Edson David, Jherome Co, Roma Cruz, Jan Arthur Consolacion
Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Physics, University of the Philippines Los Banos

Introduction
When an uncharged capacitor and resistor are connected in series to a voltage source, charge will
flow until the capacitor becomes fully charged, in which the charge stored on its plates is given by Q=CV,
where C is the capacitance of the capacitor and V is the voltage. Once the voltage source is removed, the
charge on the capacitor returns to zero and the capacitor discharges. In this paper, the non-steady electric
field with resistor and capacitor will be discussed as well as the relation of time with the potential drop and
current across the resistor and capacitor.
This paper seeks to explain the ability of a capacitor to store charge and provide a potential difference when
completely charged and discharged and to determine experimentally from the graph the time constant of the
RC circuit.

Methodology
Two set ups were made in determining the time constant and voltage drop across the resistor for
both charging and discharging capacitor in an RC circuit driven by a dc voltage. The power capacitance in a
20uF capacitor and resistance in 5 Mega ohms resistor were measured initially. For charging, the resistor
and capacitor were connected in series in breadboard, making sure that the capacitor is fully discharge
before closing the circuit. Then, the RC combination was connected to a battery and, the varying voltage
drop across and current through the resistor were recorded for interval of every 5 seconds. This is done for
2 trials. The connection was removed at exactly 240 seconds. After gathering the data, the values were
plotted.
For discharging capacitor, the end of the resistor to the other end of the capacitor was connected (the device
used for charging capacitor). The circuit is not connected to a battery for this time. The voltage drop and
the current were also recorded twice. Then the values collected upon reaching 240 seconds were plotted.

Results and Discussion

Figure 5-1.Potential drop across the resistor and capacitor during charging

Figure 5-2. Current through the resistor and accumulated charges on the
plate of the capacitor during charging

Figure 5-3. Potential drop across the resistor and capacitor during discharging

Figure 5-4. Current through the resistor and accumulated charges on the
plate of the capacitor during discharging

In this experiment, we see how the charging and discharging process takes place in a basic RC
circuit. During the charging process, the potential drop across the resistor started at 1.6865V and ended up
at around 0.239V. Simultaneously the current was measured at the same time, having an output of 0.3A at
t=0, and 0A at t=240s. During the set up, the team used two resistors in series connection which has a total
resistance of 5.51 Mega Ohms, since there is no single resistor in the lab equipment to attain 5 mega ohms
resistance. In the first attempt to do the experiment, the group had complications because of a lot of factors
like, the connection of the resistors and the capacitors to the breadboard, resulting to zero values on each
multimeter that is measuring the resistance and the current in the circuit respectively. At the time we fixed
the circuit and made sure all wires and each resistor and capacitor were connected properly then the
experiment goes on. Every five seconds, starting at zero second, we measure each value of the voltage
through the resistors and also the current through the capacitor. It can be seen in the graph that both have
values that are decreasing. These results support the theoretical approach that as one capacitor charges
voltage through the resistor, in between the capacitor and the source charge, decreases as the charge is
being stored in the capacitor from the battery, though in time, we can see that the current across the resistor
and the voltage drop according to the reading in each multimeter, does not reach zero at the same time. This
can be explained by the limitation of the device to measure very small amount of current that passes
through the given circuit, thus giving a reading of 0.00 through what we cannot see are the numbers located
way further the decimal point.
Whilst in the discharging process, it can be seen in the graph that both the voltage and the current
across the resistor suddenly increases in some amount of time though following the graph it also decreases
at the time when it has reached its peak. This is because the source of the flow of charge now is the charged
capacitor already. And as we release the voltage source, the charge that is instored in the capacitor suddenly
in a short amount of time was released thus the charges flow freely throughout the circuit. The decrease that
can be seen in the data however, can be explained because at some point all of the stored charges in the
capacitor will be released thus the reading in will approach the value of zero in time.

Conclusion
In this experiment, we studied the process of charging and discharging of a capacitor in a RC
circuit and the relationship of the potential drop and current to time. In charging the capacitor, the potential
drop decreased as the time increased. Also, the current decreased with time. In the discharging process, the
potential drop increased for a small amount of time but then decreased with time. The current also followed
the same trend with the potential drop.

References
1. H. Young, R. Freedman, University Physics with Modern Physics 12th Edition, Chapter 26.4, Pearson
Education Inc., San Francisco CA, 2008.
2. PHYS 82 Laboratory Manual, Exercise 5 RC Circuit, Physics Division IMSP, UPLB, 2014.