Experiment 10: Capacitor Charging/Discharging

Introduction: Capacitors are electrical components that store energy in the form of an electric field. This lab demonstrates the charging and discharging pattern of a capacitor.

- Calculate necessary circuit component values that will satisfy the objectives of the lab circuit.
- Create the circuit and run tests.
- Conclusion

Procedure:

First, we calculated expressions for a non-ideal charging/discharging capacitor circuit.

We then calculated for the component values of an ideal capacitor circuit such that the lab's parameters were met.

2.5 mJ of  Energy into the capacitor.

The variable resistance box has a max power output of 1W, which is more than enough for how we are using it.

Because the oscilloscope was set on continuous recording, we couldn't acquire the charging graph, so instead we used a stopwatch and a voltmeter to measure the voltage of the charging capacitor within 20 seconds.

Materials 1 Voltmeter and 1 stopwatch (optional), 1 oscilloscope, 2 variable resistors, 1 33 microfarad capacitor, cables.

The circuit setup, we found that the voltage of the charging time at around 20 seconds to be 11 volts.
The time taken for the capacitor to discharge took about two seconds which was expected.



Leakage Resistance:

Error calculation:

The charging and discharging graphs, how it should appear if the oscilloscope read once and not continuous.

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Conclusion: The experiment sucessfully proved the validity of the equations used for the charging and discharging of a capacitor. The leakage resistance was found to be roughly 10 times greater than the charging resistor, which is expected due to the leakage resistor being parallel to the capacitor.