Capacitance

For our capacitance experiment we tried to find a relationship between the surface area of the plates and the distance apart the capacitors are from each other. to do this we used aluminum squares and a book to vary the size and distance. first we used a small square and measured the capacitance between 1, 10, 20, and 50 sheets of paper to get a relationship between capacitance and distance.

This is the book and how we measured the capacitance between papers. when we put the aluminum between pages we had to create tabs that popped out of the edge to hook on to the alligator clips. the hard part was getting the aluminum to not touch.

 

These are the results from our experiment were we were able to solve for the constant k within our derived capacitance equation which we found to be 6.58

Using this data we input it into the excel

 

From the data from excel we created a graphical representation of our results were we saw a parabolic curve where the slope of the curve stands for the constant of k.

 

When you reverse a capacitor, with enough voltage you can get an explosive reaction that could harm you.

here we looked at the capacitors in series and in parallel and found that they are opposite that of the resistors. when capacitors are in parallel they are added together and when in series they are added inversely.

this is just some of the examples used in determining the capacitance of a circuit.