Worksheet On Capacitors
Worksheet On Capacitors
Worksheet On Capacitors
A student needs to order a capacitor for a project. He sees this picture on a web site accompanied by this
information: capacitance tolerance ± 20%.
Taking the tolerance into account, show that
(a) the maximum charge a capacitor of this type can hold is about 0.2 C [2]
June 11 Question 13
(ii) On the axes below, sketch a graph to show how the current
in the ammeter varies with time. Take t = 0 as the time
when the switch touches Y. Indicate typical values of
current and time
(c) A particular racing car has a mass of 800 kg and is travelling at 30 m s–1. It uses an ultracapacitor of
capacitance 2600 F charging to a potential difference of 2.5 V. Calculate the ratio of the energy stored
on the fully charged ultracapacitor to the kinetic energy of the car.
[3]
June 14 Question 18
A student is investigating capacitors. She uses the circuit below to check the capacitance of a capacitor labelled
2.2 μF which has a tolerance of ± 30%.
The switch flicks between contacts, X and Y, so that the capacitor charges and discharges f times per second
The capacitor must discharge fully through the resistor. Explain why 400Hz is a suitable value for f [3]
June 12 Question 16
A student was investigating the charge and discharge of a capacitor. He set up the following circuit
(b) The student wanted to plot a current-time graph as the capacitor charged, but found that the current changed too
rapidly for him to take readings. Instead, he modelled the experiment using a spreadsheet. The switch was closed
at time t= 0 s. V is the potential difference across the capacitor
(i) Plot the missing points and draw a line of best fit
[2]
(ii) Use the graph to determine a second value for the time
constant [2]
[1]
(d) An alternative method of determining the time constant is to use a straight line graph. State and explain the
variables that the student should plot and how he should determine the time constant from this graph [3]