In this lab, we get to study more on oscilloscopes and how they operate in a circuit
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| How capacitors behave in a circuit |
We first focused on how to derive formulas for capacitors in both series and parallel circuits. We find that in a parallel circuit, that it is the sum of the capacitors that equals to the total capacitance. However, in the series, its the inverse sum of all the capacitor that equals to the total capacitance.
It is important to note that a capacitor acts completely opposite to how a resistor works, in terms of their equations.
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| An example problem to help understand capacitors in circuits |
We took what we know into an example problem, focusing on capacitor in series, and using the information given to find things such as voltage, power and charge.
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| Example of a RC Circuit |
In this example that Mason has provided for us, he shows us an RC circuit, and how as time passes the light bulb, which was originally being powered by the voltage generator, is slowly declining due to the capacitor.
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| Our set-up of Prof Mason's Lab |
Prof Mason then had us set up our own version of his lab, in which we were told to charge the capacitor, and then discharge it once it has been fully charged.
Note, just like I explained in the last lab, we must be very cautious of how this lab is set up, as the capacitor does have the capability to implode upon wrong set-up, which almost happened to us
Note, just like I explained in the last lab, we must be very cautious of how this lab is set up, as the capacitor does have the capability to implode upon wrong set-up, which almost happened to us
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| Us charging the capacitor |
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| Us discharging the capacitor |
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| Calculations of the lab |
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| A crude sketch of our graph |
We were also asked to create a sketch on loggerpro, and were asked to sketch it on a board. We were also asked about the importance of the equation.
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| The importance of the graph's equation |
We then set out onto finding said importance of the equations that the charging and discharging showed, and found out that the equations yielded turns out to be an exponential function in which we learn about a few things.
1) Tau, the time constant, which is equal to RC
2) That the capacitance is dependent on time (also that discharging a capacitor takes an infinite amount of time)
3) That under an infinite amount of time, the voltage and charge of the capacitor equals to zero
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| An example RC circuit problem |
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| Our solution to the problem |
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