Geological Engineering Department

Faculty of Engineering

Physics for Scientists and Engineers

CAPACITANCE & DIELECTRIC

Geological Engineering Department
Faculty of Engineering

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 Geological Engineering Department
Faculty of Engineering

Storing Energy
When you pull back the string of an archer’s
bow, you are storing mechanical energy as
elastic potential energy!

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 Geological Engineering Department
Faculty of Engineering

Capacitor

• A capacitor is a device that stores electric

potential energy and electric charge.

• Capacitors have a tremendous number of

practical applications in devices such as
electronic flash units for photography, pulsed
lasers, air bag sensors for cars, and radio and
television receivers.

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 Geological Engineering Department
Faculty of Engineering

Capacitor

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Capacitance is typified by a
parallel plate arrangement and is
defined in terms of charge
storage:

where
Q = magnitude of charge stored on each plate.
V = voltage applied to the plates.

“capacitance is a measure of the ability of a capacitor to store energy”

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 Geological Engineering Department
Faculty of Engineering

Perhatian
Jangan keliru dalam membedakan simbol
C untuk kapasitansi yang selalu dicetak
dalam huruf miring dengan singkatan C
untuk satuan coulomb yang tidak pernah
dicetak dalam huruf miring

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 Geological Engineering Department
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Calculating Capacitance: capacitors in vacuum

• We can calculate the capacitance C of a given capacitor

by finding the potential difference Vab between the
conductors for a given magnitude of charge Q.

• For now we’ll consider only capacitors in vacuum; that is,

we’ll assume that the conductors that make up the
capacitor are separated by empty space.

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Calculating Capacitance

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Class Assignment

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Answer

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Capacitors in Series

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Capacitors in Paralel

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Faculty of Engineering

Storing Energy in a Capacitor

The energy stored on a capacitor can be expressed in terms of the work done by
the battery. Voltage represents energy per unit charge, so the work to move a
charge element dq from the negative plate to the positive plate is equal to V dq,
where V is the voltage on the capacitor. The voltage V is proportional to the amount
of charge which is already on the capacitor.

Element of energy stored:

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 Geological Engineering Department
Faculty of Engineering

Energy Stored on a Capacitor

The energy stored on a capacitor can
be calculated from the equivalent
expressions:

This energy is stored in the electric field.

From the definition of voltage as the energy per unit charge, one might
expect that the energy stored on this ideal capacitor would be just QV. That
is, all the work done on the charge in moving it from one plate to the other
would appear as energy stored. But in fact, the expression above shows
that just half of that work appears as energy stored in the capacitor. For a
finite resistance, one can show that half of the energy supplied by the
battery for the charging of the capacitor is dissipated as heat in the resistor,
regardless of the size of the resistor.
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If Q is the amount of charge stored when the whole battery voltage appears across the
capacitor, then the stored energy is obtained from the integral:

This energy expression can be put in three equivalent forms by just permutations based on
the definition of capacitance C=Q/V.

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Dielectric
• Most capacitors have a
nonconducting material,
or dielectric, between
their conducting plates.

• A common type of
capacitor uses long
strips of metal foil for the
plates, separated by
strips of plastic sheet
such as Mylar.
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Home Assignment

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