Contents

Contents

Capacitor

Inductor

RC Circuit

Pages
What is a Capacitor?
Parts of capacitor
How a capacitor works?
Uses of capacitor
Capacitance
What is an inductor?
How does an inductor works?
Uses of inductor
Inductance
What is a RC circuit?
What does a RC circuit do?
Application of RC circuit

RC Circuit
What is a Capacitor?
A capacitor (sometimes known as condensers) is a bit like a battery, but it
has a different job to do. They are used to store an electrical charge. Sometimes

capacitors are used to smooth a current in a circuit. When power is supplied to a

circuit that includes a capacitor, the capacitor charges up. When power is turned
off, the capacitor discharges its electrical charge slowly.

Parts of a Capacitor
Capacitors come in all shapes and sizes, but they usually have the same
basic components. They are composed of two conductors separated by an
insulating material called a dielectric. Capacitors use dielectrics made from all
sorts of materials. In transistor radios, the tuning is carried out by a large
variable capacitor that has nothing but air between its plates. In most electronic
circuits, the capacitors are sealed components with dielectrics made of ceramics
such as mica and glass, or paper soaked in oil.

How a Capacitor works

When you turn on the power, an electric charge gradually builds up on the
plates. One plate gains a positive charge and the other plate gains an equal and
negative charge. If you disconnect the power, the capacitor will slowly leak
away over time.

Uses of Capacitor
Capacitors have many uses in electronic and electrical systems. They are
so ubiquitous that it is rare that an electrical product does not include at least
one for some purpose. In car audio systems, large capacitors store energy for the
amplifier to use on demand. They are also can be used as rechargeable batteries
in many appliances.

Capacitance
The amount of electrical energy a capacitor can store is called its
capacitance and is measured in units called farads (F), named for English
electrical pioneer Michael Faraday (17911867). The bigger the capacitance,
the more electricity a capacitor can store. There are three ways to increase the
capacitance of a capacitor. One is to increase the size of the plates. Another is to
move the plates closer together. The third way is to make the dielectric as good
an insulator as possible. Due to this, we can calculate the value of capacitance
as follows:

In practice, most of the capacitors we use are just fractions of a farad

typically microfarads (F), nanofarads (nF), and picofarads (pF).

What is an Inductor?
An inductor is a passive electronic component that stores energy in the
form of a magnetic field. In its simplest form, an inductor consists of a wire
loop or coil. The inductance is directly proportional to the number of turns in

the coil. Inductance also depends on the radius of the coil and on the type of
material around which the coil is wound.
The standard unit of inductance is the henry abbreviate dH. This is a large
unit. More common units are the microhenry, abbreviated H (1 H =10-6H)
and the millihenry, abbreviated mH (1 mH =10-3 H). Occasionally, the
nanohenry (nH) is used (1 nH = 10-9 H).

Symbol of inductor

Simple circuit with inductor

How Does An Inductor Works?

When current first starts flowing in the coil, the coil wants to build up a
magnetic field. While the field is building, the coil inhibits the flow of current.
Once the field is built, current can flow normally through the wire. When the
switch gets opened, the magnetic field around the coil keeps current flowing in
the coil until the field collapses.

Uses of Inductor
Inductor is used as the energy storage device in many switched-mode
power supplies to produce DC current. The inductor supplies energy to the

circuit to keep current flowing during the "off" switching periods. Inductors are
used extensively with capacitors and resistors to create filters for analog circuits
and in signal processing. Alone, an inductor functions as a low-pass filter, since
the impedance of an inductor increases as the frequency of a signal increases.
Contactless sensors are prized for their reliability and ease of operation and
inductors can be used to sense magnetic fields or the presence of magnetically
permeable material from a distance. Inductive sensors are used at nearly every
intersection with a traffic light to detect the amount of traffic and adjust the
signal accordingly. These sensors work exceptionally well for cars and trucks,
but some motorcycles and other vehicles.

Inductance
In electromagnetism and electronics, inductance is the property of an
electrical conductor by which a change in current flowing through it induces an
electromotive force in both the conductor itself and in any nearby conductors by
mutual inductance.
The formulae of inductance is:

What is a RC circuit?

A resistorcapacitor circuit (RC circuit) is an electric circuit composed of

resistors and capacitors driven by a voltage or current source. A simple RC
circuit is composed of one resistor and one capacitor.

What does a RC circuit do?

They play an important role in the transmission of electrical signals as in
nerve cells. When a circuit consists of only a charged capacitor and a resistor,
the capacitor will discharge its stored energy through the resistor. The voltage
across the capacitor, which is time dependent, can be found by using Kirchhoff's
current law, where the current charging the capacitor must equal the current
through the resistor. This results in the linear differential equation,

where C= capacitance of capacitor.

Solving this equation for V yields the formula for exponential decay:

where V0 is the capacitor voltage at time t = 0.

The time required for the voltage to fall to is called the RC time constant and is
given by

Application of RC Circuit

High-pass filter
A high-pass filter is an electronic filter that offer easy passage of a highfrequency signal from source to load and difficult passage to a low-frequency
signal. Capacitive high-pass filters insert a capacitor in series with the load
while inductive high-pass filters insert a resistor in series and an inductor in
parallel with the load. The cutoff frequency for a high-pass filter is that
frequency at which the output (load) voltage equals 70.7% of the input (source)
voltage. Above the cutoff frequency, the output voltage is greater than 70.7% of
the input, and vice versa.

Low-pass filter
A low-pass filter is the opposite of a high-pass filter. It offers easy
passage to low-frequency signals and difficult passage to high-frequency
signals. Inductive low-pass filters insert an inductor in series with the load while
capacitive low-pass filters insert a resistor in series and a capacitor in parallel
with the load. The cutoff frequency for a low-pass filter is that frequency at
which the output (load) voltage equals 70.7% of the input (source) voltage.
Above the cutoff frequency, the output voltage is lower than 70.7% of the input,
and vice versa.

Band-pass filter

Band-pass filters are designed by combining the properties of low-pass

and high-pass into a single filter. These types of filters will only allow passage
of those frequencies that are neither too high nor too low.

Band-pass filters are widely used in wireless transmitters and receivers. The
main function of such a filter in a transmitter is to limit the bandwidth of the
output signal to the band allocated for the transmission. This prevents the
transmitter from interfering with other stations. In a receiver, a band-pass filter
allows signals within a selected range of frequencies to be heard or decoded,
while preventing signals at unwanted frequencies from getting through.