External 6 Credits Achievement Standard 90523

DC Electricity Define and use the concepts of current and potential. State and apply Ohms law. Carry out calculations involving resistance, including resistances in series and in parallel. Carry out calculations involving electrical power. Say what internal resistance is, and carry out related calculations. Kirchoffs Laws State Kirchoffs current law, and explain how it is a consequence of the conservation of charge. State Kirchoffs voltage law, and explain how it is a consequence of the conservation of energy. Carry out calculations involving the above. Calculate the potential of one point in a circuit relative to another point.

Electric Fields and Capacitance. Define and electric field qualitatively. Define the strength of an electric field. State what is shown by the direction of an electric field. Give an example of a situation in which here is a uniform electric field. Carry out calculations involving the work done in moving a charged particle in a uniform electrical field. State and use 2 formulae for electrical field strength, and state the 2 units for electric field strength which corresponds to these formulae. Say what capacitance is and give the defining equation. Describe a parallel plate capacitor, say how capacitance depends on three quantities, and state the relevant equation. Carry out calculations involving stored energy, capacitances in series and capacitances in parallel.

KCL (Kirchhoffs Current Law)

For any point in a circuit, the current arriving must equal the current leaving. This is because charge can neither be created nor destroyed; the amount of charge arriving at a point in 1 s must equal the amount of charge leaving from the point in 1 s.

1 + 2 = 3 + 4

KCV (Kirchhoffs Voltage Law)

The sum of the voltage changes around a closed loop in a circuit is zero. This is because energy is conserved. Any charge which leaves a point with a certain amount of electrical energy must on its return to that point have the same amount of electrical energy. Remember =

+ + + = 0 81 + 102 7 63 14 = 0

Generate equations using KCL and KVL. Solve them to find the unknown quantities. You need the same number of distinct equations as you do unknowns.

KVL tricks:

Pick a starting point and go around the loop. The voltage across a resistor is positive if you are going around the loop in the same direction as the current through the resistor The voltage of a battery is positive if you come to its positive plate before its negative plate.

Every voltage can be considered to be a combination of a electromotive force, , and an internal resistance, . If we measured the voltage of the circuit when no current is flowing, then we would measure the electromotive force, EMF. If we measured the voltage of the circuit when there is a current is flowing, then we would measure the voltage that is reduced by the internal resistance. This yields the equation:

Mutual inductance occurs when the changing magnetic flux induces a voltage in a nearby coil, and thus causes a current in that coil. Self inductance is when this occurs in the same circuit, and even in the same coil!
When a current flows through a circuit, it produces a magnetic field. This produces magnetic flux through the circuit. If the current changes, the flux through the circuit changesthis change of flux produces a voltage in the circuit.

The flux in the circuit will be proportional to the current that causes it: = (L is the constant of proportionality) The voltage is given by: = Combining these equations: = L (unit, henries, H) is called the self inductance of the circuit, often shortened to just inductance.

The equation shows that the self inductance acts very strangely: If the current is increasing:

If the current is decreasing: If the currrent is constant:

The induced voltage will try to keep the current going.

The induced voltage will oppose the increase.

The induced voltage is zero there is no voltage across the inductance.

In this circuit, if we were to measure the voltages across C and R, we would find: + This equation would not hold for RMS or maximum voltage values. When would it hold true? We can say = + for any instantaneous measurement of the voltages. So how can we deal with this problem?

VA
We start by drawing a reference circle: We know that the alternating current and the voltage through the resistor will be in phase (they occur at the same time). We also know that the capacitors voltage is 2 radians behind the alternating current. The alternating voltage is therefore found by adding + . This will give us . This phasor diagram will give this graph when rotated. Each instant of the graph is accurate.

I VR
VC

The next step here is to realise how much we can calculate from VR this vector diagram. Because it is a right angled triangle, we use Pythagoras to calculate the size of .
= = 2 + 2 2 2 2 + 2 2

VA

VC

2 +

1 2 2

Here we have used = for the resistor and = for the capacitor. Remember 1 = . Now lets factorise.
This equation looks a lot like = , but the resistance is now a combination of the reactance and the resistance.

When we use a vector diagram like this to combine the reactance and the resistance, we get what is called the impedance of a circuit. Impedance, Z, is measured in ? Ohms! it is still basically a resistance. For a capacitor and a resistor in series in an alternating current circuit, the impedance is given by

2 +

Now we can write = Just to clarify: Reactance is the effective resistance of a capacitor or inductor in an alternating current circuit. Impedance is the vector combination of the resistance and the reactance, taking into account the phase of each reactance.

1 2 2

We also need to know how much phase difference there is on . The phase difference angle is measured between and . Why?
Simple trigonometry:

VA VR

VC

1 tan

= tan1 1 1 = tan

We can perform a very similar derivation with an inductor in series with a resistor. The main difference is that the inductance voltage phasor leads the voltage through the resistor by .
2

Recall the reactance of an inductor is given by = .

The impedance of a RL circuit running an alternating current: =

=

VA

VR

2 2 + 2 2 2

2 + 2 2

VL

= 2 + 2 2 So now we can write =

= 1 = tan tan1

The impedance of an RC circuit:

The impedance of an RL circuit:

1 + 2 2

The phase difference: 1 1 = tan

= 2 + 2 2 The phase difference: 1 = tan

Capacitor

Inductor

The RC circuit opposite shows a 120 resistor in series with a 0.68 F capacitor. The supply voltage is set to be 6.0 VRMS, at a frequency of 2.4 kHz. 1. Calculate the angular frequency of the supply. 2. Calculate the reactance of the capacitor. 3. Write down the reactance of the resistor. 4. Sketch a vector diagram of the reactances, and use this to calculate the impedance of the circuit. 5. Use Ohms Law to calculate the RMS current drawn from the supply.

120

0.68F

The RL circuit opposite shows a 120 resistor in series with a 540 mH inductor. The resistor voltage is measured to be 1.5 VRMS and the inductor voltage is measured to be 2.0 VRMS. 1. Sketch a voltage phasor diagram. 2. Sketch a voltage vector diagram, and use it to calculate the voltage of the AC supply. 3. Calculate the reactance of the inductor. 4. Calculate the impedance of the circuit. 5. Calculate the generator frequency.

120

540 mH

Now we are going to combine a resistor, an inductor and a capacitor in series in the same circuit with an alternating current power supply. Yes, its kind of epic. Recall: is in phase with the current. is behind the current. is ahead of the 2 current.
2

VR, VC and VL are drawn as shown. You can see that VC and VL are directly opposite each other, and will cancel vectorially. The A.C. voltage is the vectorial combination of VR and VL VC.
VL VA VL-VC VR VC

So we can see that: = =

2

+ 2
2

+ 2

Using the reactances of L and C.

=
=

1 1

+ 2
+ 2

Factorise the current out.

+ 2

This is the impedance of the LCR circuit!

This is the impedance of the LCR circuit. We can see that the impedance is minimised when 1 1 = 0, or =

+ 2

In fact, when = the impedance of the circuit simplifies to = 2 , or = . This means that under certain conditions, an AC circuit can be considered to have only resistance.

There are 3 ways make an AC circuit resonate.

We need to make =

1. We could change L. 2. We could change C. 3. We could alter the frequency.

Given that = 2, and that the resonant 1 frequency occurs when = , solve for the frequency. That last one was an instruction, I actually want you to try to find the resonant frequency equation.

1 = 1 = 1 2 = 1 = 1 2 = 1 = 2

This frequency is called the resonant frequency. At resonance, the effects of the inductance and the capacitance cancel out and the circuit impedance equals the resistance. When the frequency is lower than the resonant frequency, the capacitance effects dominate the circuit. When the frequency is higher than the resonant frequency, the inductance effects dominate the circuit.

Note that this is called the resonant frequency for a reason. It can resonate. For example, in this circuit: = 1 = 40 mH = 25 F = 20 V Calculate the resonant frequency. Calculate , , and at this frequency.

At resonance, the resistor is the only thing limiting the current. This means the voltages across the other components can be much larger than the supply voltage.