SRI VETRI VIDHYALAYA PUBLIC SCHOOL

E. VELLANUR – 621 712

PHYSICS INVESTIGATORY
PROJECT

CAPACITORS

NAME : MUTHU SARAVANAN R

REGISTER NUMBER :
GRADE : XII
SUBJECT : PHYSICS
SUBJECT CODE : 042

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 SRI VETRI VIDHYALAYA PUBLIC SCHOOL
E. VELLANUR – 621 712

BONAFIDE CERTIFICATE

Register No :

Subject : Physics (042)

This is to certify that the project was done by
MUTHU SARAVANAN R for Physics in the year 2024-2025.
Submitted for AISSC Examination on ____________

Internal Examiner External Examiner

Principal

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 SRI VETRI VIDHYALAYA PUBLIC SCHOOL
E. VELLANUR – 621 712

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to

everyone who helped make this investigatory project possible.
First and foremost, I would like to thank my Physics teacher
Mrs. JASMINE FREEDA M for guiding me throughout the entire
process and providing valuable feedback and support.
I would also like to thank my classmates who helped
with data collection and analysis, as well as my parents for
providing the necessary materials and encouragement.
Additionally, I would like to acknowledge the scientists and
researchers whose work served as inspiration and provided the
foundation for my project.

I would also like to thank my school, for supporting

my project and giving me the opportunity to learn and grow.

Name : MUTHU SARAVANAN R

Class : XII

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 INDEX

S. No. TOPIC Page

Number

1. Capacitor 1
2. Theory of operation 4
3. Hydraulic analogy 6
4. Circuit equivalence at short-time limit
and long-time limit 7
5. Parallel-plate capacitor 8
6. Energy stored in a capacitor 11
7. Current–voltage relation 11
8. DC circuits 12
9. AC circuits 12
10. Circuit analysis 14
11. For capacitors in parallel 14
12. For capacitors in series 15
13. Capacitor types 16
14. Dielectric materials 16
15. Voltage-dependent capacitors 21
16. Frequency-dependent capacitors 22
17. Conclusion 24
18. Bibliography 24

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 Capacitor

Capacitor

Type Electronic component

Working principle Capacitance

Invented Ewald Georg von Kleist (1745)

Pieter van Musschenbroek (1746)

Electronic symbol

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In electrical engineering, a capacitor is a device that
stores electrical energy by accumulating electric charges on two
closely spaced surfaces that are insulated from each other. The
capacitor was originally known as the condenser, a term still
encountered in a few compound names, such as the condenser
microphone. It is a passive electronic component with
two terminals.
The utility of a capacitor depends on its capacitance. While
some capacitance exists between any two electrical conductors
in proximity in a circuit, a capacitor is a component designed
specifically to add capacitance to some part of the circuit.
The physical form and construction of practical capacitors vary
widely and many types of capacitor are in common use. Most
capacitors contain at least two electrical conductors, often in the
form of metallic plates or surfaces separated by
a dielectric medium. A conductor may be a foil, thin
film, sintered bead of metal, or an electrolyte.
The non-conducting dielectric acts to increase the capacitor's
charge capacity. Materials commonly used as dielectrics
include glass, ceramic, plastic film, paper, mica, air, and oxide
layers.
When an electric potential difference (a voltage) is applied
across the terminals of a capacitor, for example when a capacitor
is connected across a battery, an electric field develops across
the dielectric, causing a net positive charge to collect on one
plate and net negative charge to collect on the other plate.
No current actually flows through a perfect dielectric. However,
there is a flow of charge through the source circuit. If the
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condition is maintained sufficiently long, the current through the
source circuit ceases. If a time-varying voltage is applied across
the leads of the capacitor, the source experiences an ongoing
current due to the charging and discharging cycles of the
capacitor.
Capacitors are widely used as parts of electrical circuits in many
common electrical devices. Unlike a resistor, an ideal capacitor
does not dissipate energy, although real-life capacitors do
dissipate a small amount (see Non-ideal behavior).
The earliest forms of capacitors were created in the 1740s, when
European experimenters discovered that electric charge could be
stored in water-filled glass jars that came to be known as Leyden
jars.
Today, capacitors are widely used in electronic circuits for
blocking direct current while allowing alternating current to
pass.
In analog filter networks, they smooth the output of power
supplies. In resonant circuits they tune radios to
particular frequencies. In electric power transmission systems,
they stabilize voltage and power flow.
The property of energy storage in capacitors was exploited as
dynamic memory in early digital computers, and still is in
modern DRAM.

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Theory of Operation

Charge separation in a parallel-plate capacitor causes an internal

electric field. A dielectric (orange) reduces the field and
increases the capacitance.
A simple demonstration capacitor made of two parallel metal
plates, using an air gap as the dielectric

A capacitor consists of two conductors separated by a non-

conductive region. The non-conductive region can either be
a vacuum or an electrical insulator material known as
a dielectric.
Examples of dielectric media are glass, air, paper, plastic,
ceramic, and even a semiconductor depletion region chemically
identical to the conductors. From Coulomb's law a charge on

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one conductor will exert a force on the charge carriers within the
other conductor, attracting opposite polarity charge and repelling
like polarity charges, thus an opposite polarity charge will be
induced on the surface of the other conductor. The conductors
thus hold equal and opposite charges on their facing
surfaces,[24] and the dielectric develops an electric field.
An ideal capacitor is characterized by a constant capacitance C,
in farads in the SI system of units, defined as the ratio of the
positive or negative charge Q on each conductor to the
voltage V between them:[23]
𝑄
∁=
𝑉

A capacitance of one farad (F) means that one coulomb of charge

on each conductor causes a voltage of one volt across the
device. Because the conductors (or plates) are close together, the
opposite charges on the conductors attract one another due to their
electric fields, allowing the capacitor to store more charge for a
given voltage than when the conductors are separated, yielding a
larger capacitance.

In practical devices, charge build-up sometimes affects the

capacitor mechanically, causing its capacitance to vary. In this
case, capacitance is defined in terms of incremental changes:

𝑑𝑄
𝐶=
𝑑𝑉

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Hydraulic analogy

In the hydraulic analogy, a capacitor is analogous to an elastic

diaphragm within a pipe. This animation shows a diaphragm
being stretched and un-stretched, which is analogous to a
capacitor being charged and discharged.
In the hydraulic analogy, voltage is analogous to water pressure
and electrical current through a wire is analogous to water flow
through a pipe. A capacitor is like an elastic diaphragm within
the pipe. Although water cannot pass through the diaphragm, it
moves as the diaphragm stretches or un-stretches.
 Capacitance is analogous to diaphragm elasticity. In the same
way that the ratio of charge differential to voltage would be
greater for a larger capacitance value (𝐶 = 𝑄 ⁄𝑉 ), the ratio of
water displacement to pressure would be greater for a
diaphragm that flexes more readily.
 In an AC circuit, a capacitor behaves like a diaphragm in a
pipe, allowing the charge to move on both sides of the
dielectric while no electrons actually pass through.
 For DC circuits, a capacitor is analogous to a hydraulic
accumulator, storing the energy until pressure is released.
Similarly, they can be used to smooth the flow of electricity
in rectified DC circuits in the same way an accumulator
dampens surges from a hydraulic pump.
 Charged capacitors and stretched diaphragms both
store potential energy. The more a capacitor is charged, the
higher the voltage across the plates (𝑉 = 𝑄 ⁄𝐶 ). Likewise, the

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 greater the displaced water volume, the greater the elastic
potential energy.
 Electrical current affects the charge differential across a
capacitor just as the flow of water affects the volume
differential across a diaphragm.
 Just as capacitors experience dielectric breakdown when
subjected to high voltages, diaphragms burst under extreme
pressures.
 Just as capacitors block DC while passing AC, diaphragms
displace no water unless there is a change in pressure.

Circuit equivalence at short-time limit and long-time

limit
In a circuit, a capacitor can behave differently at different time
instants. However, it is usually easy to think about the short-time
limit and long-time limit:
 In the long-time limit, after the charging/discharging current
has saturated the capacitor, no current would come into (or
get out of) either side of the capacitor; Therefore, the long-
time equivalence of capacitor is an open circuit.

 In the short-time limit, if the capacitor starts with a certain

voltage V, since the voltage drop on the capacitor is known at
this instant, we can replace it with an ideal voltage source of
voltage V. Specifically, if V=0 (capacitor is uncharged), the
short-time equivalence of a capacitor is a short circuit.

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Parallel-plate capacitor

Parallel plate capacitor model consists of two conducting plates,

each of area A, separated by a gap of thickness d containing a
dielectric.

A surface-mount capacitor. The plates, not visible, are layered

horizontally between ceramic dielectric layers, and connect
alternately to either end-cap, which are visible.
The simplest model of a capacitor consists of two thin parallel
conductive plates each with an area of A separated by a uniform
gap of thickness d filled with a dielectric of permittivity ∈. It is
assumed the gap d is much smaller than the dimensions of the
plates.
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This model applies well to many practical capacitors which are
constructed of metal sheets separated by a thin layer of insulating
dielectric, since manufacturers try to keep the dielectric very
uniform in thickness to avoid thin spots which can cause failure
of the capacitor.
Since the separation between the plates is uniform over the plate
area, the electric field between the plates E is constant, and
directed perpendicularly to the plate surface, except for an area
near the edges of the plates where the field decreases because the
electric field lines "bulge" out of the sides of the capacitor. This
"fringing field" area is approximately the same width as the plate
separation, d, and assuming d is small compared to the plate
dimensions, it is small enough to be ignored. Therefore, if a
charge of +Q is placed on one plate and -Q on the other plate (the
situation for unevenly charged plates is discussed below), the
charge on each plate will be spread evenly in a surface
charge layer of constant charge density coulombs per square
meter, on the inside surface of each plate. From Gauss's law the
magnitude of the electric field between the plates is 𝐸 = 𝜎⁄𝜀 . The
voltage(difference) between the plates is defined as the line
integral of the electric field over a line (in the z-direction) from
one plate to another. . Substituting above into this equation

𝑑
𝜎 𝑄𝑑
𝑉 = ∫ 𝐸 (𝑧)𝑑𝑧 = 𝐸𝑑 = 𝑑=
0 𝜀 𝜖𝐴

Therefore, in a capacitor the highest capacitance is achieved with

a high permittivity dielectric material, large plate area, and small
separation between the plates.

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Since the area of the plates increases with the square of the linear
dimensions and the separation increases linearly, the capacitance
scales with the linear dimension of a capacitor or as the cube root
of the volume.
A parallel plate capacitor can only store a finite amount of energy
before dielectric breakdown occurs. The capacitor's dielectric
material has a dielectric strength Ud which sets the capacitor's
breakdown voltage at V = Vbd = Udd.

The maximum energy is a function of dielectric

volume, permittivity, and dielectric strength. Changing the plate
area and the separation between the plates while maintaining the
same volume causes no change of the maximum amount of
energy that the capacitor can store, so long as the distance
between plates remains much smaller than both the length and
width of the plates.
In addition, these equations assume that the electric field is
entirely concentrated in the dielectric between the plates. In
reality there are fringing fields outside the dielectric
For example, between the sides of the capacitor plates, which
increase the effective capacitance of the capacitor. This is
sometimes called parasitic capacitance.
For some simple capacitor geometries this additional capacitance
term can be calculated analytically.[26] It becomes negligibly
small when the ratios of plate width to separation and length to
separation are large.

11 | P a g e
Energy stored in a capacitor
To increase the charge and voltage on a capacitor, work must be
done by an external power source to move charge from the
negative to the positive plate against the opposing force of the
electric field.
If the voltage on the capacitor is V, the work W required to
move a small increment of charge Q from the negative to the
positive plate . The energy is stored in the increased electric
field between the plates.

The total energy stored in a capacitor (expressed in joules) is

equal to the total work done in establishing the electric field
from an uncharged state. where Q is the charge stored in the
capacitor, V is the voltage across the capacitor, and the
capacitance.

This potential energy will remain in the capacitor until the

charge is removed. If charge is allowed to move back from the
positive to the negative plate, for example by connecting a
circuit with resistance between the plates, the charge moving
under the influence of the electric field will do work on the
external circuit.

If the gap between the capacitor plates is constant, as in the

parallel plate model above, the electric field between the plates
will be uniform (neglecting fringing fields) and will have a
constant value . In this case the stored energy can be calculated
from the electric field strength.

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DC circuits

A simple resistor–capacitor circuit demonstrates charging of a

capacitor.
A series circuit containing only a resistor, a capacitor, a switch
and a constant DC source of voltage V0 is known as a charging
circuit.

As the capacitor reaches equilibrium with the source voltage, the

voltages across the resistor and the current through the entire
circuit decay exponentially. In the case of a discharging capacitor

AC circuits
Impedance, the vector sum of reactance and resistance, describes
the phase difference and the ratio of amplitudes between
sinusoidally varying voltage and sinusoidally varying current at a
given frequency. Fourier analysis allows any signal to be
constructed from a spectrum of frequencies, whence the circuit's
reaction to the various frequencies may be found. The reactance
and impedance of a capacitor are respectively where j is
the imaginary unit and ω is the angular frequency of the
sinusoidal signal. The −j phase indicates that the AC
voltage V = ZI lags the AC current by 90°: the positive current
phase corresponds to increasing voltage as the capacitor charges;
zero current corresponds to instantaneous constant voltage, etc.
13 | P a g e
Impedance decreases with increasing capacitance and increasing
frequency. This implies that a higher-frequency signal or a larger
capacitor results in a lower voltage amplitude per current
amplitude – an AC "short circuit" or AC coupling. Conversely,
for very low frequencies, the reactance is high, so that a capacitor
is nearly an open circuit in AC analysis – those frequencies have
been "filtered out".
Capacitors are different from resistors and inductors in that the
impedance is inversely proportional to the defining
characteristic; i.e., capacitance.
A capacitor connected to an alternating voltage source has a
displacement current to flowing through it
At sin(ωt) = −1, the capacitor has a maximum (or peak) current
whereby I0 = ωCV0. The ratio of peak voltage to peak current is
due to capacitive reactance (denoted XC).
XC approaches zero as ω approaches infinity. If XC approaches 0,
the capacitor resembles a short wire that strongly passes current
at high frequencies. XC approaches infinity as ω approaches zero.
If XC approaches infinity, the capacitor resembles an open circuit
that poorly passes low frequencies.
The current of the capacitor may be expressed in the form of
cosines to better compare with the voltage of the source
In this situation, the current is out of phase with the voltage by
+π/2 radians or +90 degrees, i.e. the current leads the voltage by
90°.

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Circuit analysis
For capacitors in parallel

Several capacitors in parallel

Illustration of the parallel connection of two capacitors

Capacitors in a parallel configuration each have the same applied
voltage. Their capacitances add up. Charge is apportioned among
them by size. Using the schematic diagram to visualize parallel
plates, it is apparent that each capacitor
contributes to the total surface area.

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For capacitors in series

Several capacitors in series

Illustration of the serial connection of two capacitors

Connected in series, the schematic diagram reveals that the
separation distance, not the plate area, adds up. The capacitors
each store instantaneous charge build-up equal to that of every
other capacitor in the series. The total voltage difference from end
to end is apportioned to each capacitor according to the inverse of
its capacitance. The entire series acts as capacitor smaller than
any of its components.

Capacitors are combined in series to achieve a higher working

voltage, for example for smoothing a high voltage power supply.
The voltage ratings, which are based on plate separation, add up,
if capacitance and leakage currents for each capacitor are
identical.In such an application, on occasion, series strings are
connected in parallel, forming a matrix.

16 | P a g e
Capacitor types
Practical capacitors are available commercially in many different
forms. The type of internal dielectric, the structure of the plates
and the device packaging all strongly affect the characteristics of
the capacitor, and its applications.
Values available range from very low (picofarad range; while
arbitrarily low values are in principle possible, stray (parasitic)
capacitance in any circuit is the limiting factor) to about
5 kF super capacitors.
Above approximately 1 microfarad electrolytic capacitors are
usually used because of their small size and low cost compared
with other types, unless their relatively poor stability, life and
polarised nature make them unsuitable. Very high capacity
supercapacitors use a porous carbon-based electrode material.
Dielectric materials

An assortment of capacitor types. From left: multilayer ceramic,

ceramic disc, multilayer polyester film, tubular ceramic,
polystyrene, metalized polyester film, aluminum electrolytic.
Major scale divisions are in centimetres.
Most capacitors have a dielectric spacer, which increases their
capacitance compared to air or a vacuum. In order to maximise
the charge that a capacitor can hold, the dielectric material needs
to have as high a permittivity as possible, while also having as
17 | P a g e
high a breakdown voltage as possible. The dielectric also needs
to have as low a loss with frequency as possible.
However, low value capacitors are available with a high vacuum
between their plates to allow extremely high voltage operation
and low losses. Variable capacitors with their plates open to the
atmosphere were commonly used in radio tuning circuits. Later
designs use polymer foil dielectric between the moving and
stationary plates, with no significant air space between the plates.
Several solid dielectrics are available,
including paper, plastic, glass, mica and ceramic.
Paper was used extensively in older capacitors and offers
relatively high voltage performance. However, paper absorbs
moisture, and has been largely replaced by plastic film capacitors.
Most of the plastic films now used offer better stability and ageing
performance than such older dielectrics such as oiled paper,
which makes them useful in timer circuits, although they may be
limited to relatively low operating temperatures and frequencies,
because of the limitations of the plastic film being used. Large
plastic film capacitors are used extensively in suppression
circuits, motor start circuits, and power-factor correction circuits.
Ceramic capacitors are generally small, cheap and useful for high
frequency applications, although their capacitance varies strongly
with voltage and temperature and they age poorly. They can also
suffer from the piezoelectric effect. Ceramic capacitors are
broadly categorized as class 1 dielectrics, which have predictable
variation of capacitance with temperature or class 2 dielectrics,
which can operate at higher voltage. Modern multilayer ceramics

18 | P a g e
are usually quite small, but some types have inherently wide value
tolerances, microphonic issues, and are usually physically brittle.
Glass and mica capacitors are extremely reliable, stable and
tolerant to high temperatures and voltages, but are too expensive
for most mainstream applications.
Electrolytic capacitors and super capacitors are used to store
small and larger amounts of energy, respectively, ceramic
capacitors are often used in resonators, and parasitic
capacitance occurs in circuits wherever the simple conductor-
insulator-conductor structure is formed unintentionally by the
configuration of the circuit layout.

Three aluminum electrolytic capacitors of varying capacity

3D model of capacitor
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Electrolytic capacitors use an aluminum or tantalum plate with
an oxide dielectric layer. The second electrode is a
liquid electrolyte, connected to the circuit by another foil plate.
Electrolytic capacitors offer very high capacitance but suffer from
poor tolerances, high instability, gradual loss of capacitance
especially when subjected to heat, and high leakage current. Poor
quality capacitors may leak electrolyte, which is harmful to
printed circuit boards. The conductivity of the electrolyte drops at
low temperatures, which increases equivalent series resistance.
While widely used for power-supply conditioning, poor high-
frequency characteristics make them unsuitable for many
applications. Electrolytic capacitors suffer from self-degradation
if unused for a period (around a year), and when full power is
applied may short circuit, permanently damaging the capacitor
and usually blowing a fuse or causing failure of rectifier diodes.
For example, in older equipment, this may cause arcing in
rectifier tubes. They can be restored before use by gradually
applying the operating voltage, often performed on
antique vacuum tube equipment over a period of thirty minutes
by using a variable transformer to supply AC power.
The use of this technique may be less satisfactory for some solid
state equipment, which may be damaged by operation below its
normal power range, requiring that the power supply first be
isolated from the consuming circuits. Such remedies may not be
applicable to modern high-frequency power supplies as these
produce full output voltage even with reduced input Tantalum

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capacitors offer better frequency and temperature characteristics
than aluminum, but higher dielectric absorption and leakage.
Polymer capacitors (OS-CON, OC-CON, KO, AO) use solid
conductive polymer (or polymerized organic semiconductor) as
electrolyte and offer longer life and lower ESR at higher cost than
standard electrolytic capacitors.
A feedthrough capacitor is a component that, while not serving as
its main use, has capacitance and is used to conduct signals
through a conductive sheet.
Several other types of capacitor are available for specialist
applications. Supercapacitors store large amounts of energy.
Supercapacitors made from carbon aerogel, carbon nanotubes, or
highly porous electrode materials, offer extremely high
capacitance (up to 5 kF as of 2010) and can be used in some
applications instead of rechargeable batteries.
Alternating current capacitors are specifically designed to work
on line (mains) voltage AC power circuits. They are commonly
used in electric motor circuits and are often designed to handle
large currents, so they tend to be physically large.

Voltage-dependent capacitors

The dielectric constant for a number of very useful dielectrics

changes as a function of the applied electrical field, for
example ferroelectric materials, so the capacitance for these
devices is more complex. For example, in charging such a
capacitor the differential increase in voltage with charge is
governed .
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where the voltage dependence of capacitance, C(V), suggests that
the capacitance is a function of the electric field strength, which
in a large area parallel plate device is given by ε = V/d.

This field polarizes the dielectric, which polarization, in the case

of a ferroelectric, is a nonlinear S-shaped function of the electric
field, which, in the case of a large area parallel plate device,
translates into a capacitance that is a nonlinear function of the
voltage.
Corresponding to the voltage-dependent capacitance, to charge
the capacitor to voltage V an integral relation is found.

which agrees with Q = CV only when C does not depend on

voltage V.
The nonlinear capacitance of a microscope probe scanned along
a ferroelectric surface is used to study the domain structure of
ferroelectric materials. Another example of voltage dependent
capacitance occurs in semiconductor devices such as
semiconductor diodes, where the voltage dependence stems not
from a change in dielectric constant but in a voltage dependence
of the spacing between the charges on the two sides of the
capacitor. This effect is intentionally exploited in diode-like
devices known as varicaps.
Frequency-dependent capacitors

If a capacitor is driven with a time-varying voltage that changes

rapidly enough, at some frequency the polarization of the
dielectric cannot follow the voltage.

22 | P a g e
As an example of the origin of this mechanism, the internal
microscopic dipoles contributing to the dielectric constant cannot
move instantly, and so as frequency of an applied alternating
voltage increases, the dipole response is limited and the dielectric
constant diminishes.
A changing dielectric constant with frequency is referred to
as dielectric dispersion, and is governed by dielectric
relaxation processes, such as Debye relaxation. Under transient
conditions, the displacement field can be expressed as
(see electric susceptibility):
indicating the lag in response by the time dependence of εr,
calculated in principle from an underlying microscopic analysis,
for example, of the dipole behavior in the dielectric. See, for
example, linear response function. The integral extends over the
entire past history up to the present time. A Fourier transform in
time then results in: where εr(ω) is now a complex function, with
an imaginary part related to absorption of energy from the field
by the medium. See permittivity. The capacitance, being
proportional to the dielectric constant, also exhibits this frequency
behavior. Fourier transforming Gauss's law with this form for
displacement field.

where j is the imaginary unit, V(ω) is the voltage component at

angular frequency ω, G(ω) is the real part of the current, called
the conductance, and C(ω) determines the imaginary part of the
current and is the capacitance. Z(ω) is the complex
impedance.When a parallel-plate capacitor is filled with a
dielectric, the measurement of dielectric properties of the medium
is based upon the relation.

23 | P a g e
where a single prime denotes the real part and a double prime the
imaginary part, Z(ω) is the complex impedance with the dielectric
present, Ccmplx(ω) is the so-called complex capacitance with the
dielectric present, and C0 is the capacitance without the dielectric.
(Measurement "without the dielectric" in principle means
measurement in free space, an unattainable goal inasmuch as even
the quantum vacuum is predicted to exhibit nonideal behavior,
such as dichroism. For practical purposes, when measurement
errors are taken into account, often a measurement in terrestrial
vacuum, or simply a calculation of C0, is sufficiently accurate).
Using this measurement method, the dielectric constant may
exhibit a resonance at certain frequencies corresponding to
characteristic response frequencies (excitation energies) of
contributors to the dielectric constant.
These resonances are the basis for a number of experimental
techniques for detecting defects. The conductance
method measures absorption as a function of frequency.
Alternatively, the time response of the capacitance can be used
directly, as in deep-level transient spectroscopy.

24 | P a g e
Conclusion

Capacitors may retain a charge long after power is removed from

a circuit; this charge can cause dangerous or even potentially
fatal shocks or damage connected equipment. For example, even
a seemingly innocuous device such as the flash of a disposable
camera, has a photoflash capacitor which may contain over 15
joules of energy and be charged to over 300 volts. This is easily
capable of delivering a shock. Service procedures for electronic
devices usually include instructions to discharge large or high-
voltage capacitors, for instance using a Brinkley stick. Larger
capacitors, such as those used in microwave ovens, HVAC units
andmedical defibrillators may also have built-in discharge
resistors to dissipate stored energy to a safe level within a few
seconds after power is removed. High-voltage capacitors are
stored with the terminals shorted, as protection from potentially
dangerous voltages due to dielectric absorption or from transient
voltages the capacitor may pick up from static charges or passing
weather events.

25 | P a g e
 Bibliography
1. A Text-Book of Physics (4th ed.).
2. Electrical and Electronic Principles and Technology
3. Electronic Devices (7th ed.).
4. "Molecular Expressions: Electricity and Magnetism - Interactive Java
Tutorials: Lightning: A Natural Capacitor".
5. "A History of Science Volume II, Part VI: The Leyden Jar Discovered".
6. The Story of Electrical and Magnetic Measurements: From 500 BC to
the 1940s.
7. Electricity in Every-day Life
8. A History of Electricity: (The Intellectual Rise in Electricity) from
Antiquity to the Days of Benjamin Franklin. J. Wiley & Sons
9. Enlightenment. Princeton "Sketch of Alessandro Volta".
10.British Engineering Standards Association, British Standard Glossary
of Terms in Electrical Engineering, C. Lockwood & Son, 1926

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