Time and Capacitors
This post is a response to an exercise in the book “Make: Electronics”.
In this exercise, the focus is on Time Constant, also known as TC. By putting a capacitor into into closed circuit, with a resistor between PWR and the capacitor’s positive side, we are able to see in real time the capacitor “filling up”. In order to see the capacitor “filling up”, a multimeter’s probes are placed on each side of the capacitor. We can see that the needle slowly starts climbing.
The full formula that’s the focus of this experiment is Time Constant = resistance (ohms) x capacitor (farads), also known as TC = R x C. TC is measured in seconds. This means that it takes TC time to fill the capacitor up 63% of its full charge. The next TC will accumulate 63% of the remaining ‘space’ to fill.
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