Method 1

Theory

 

Capacitance of the capacitor could be found by using formula:

The formula written above helps us to find the capacitance for flat plate capacitor. However, it was later proved that this formula could also be used for rolled capacitor.

When two capacitors are placed in series, charge comes to each plate with the same magnitude. This means: ; . Hence that; .

When a capacitor is charged, V across the capacitor could be found by this formula: and this formula to find current: .

When a capacitor is discharged, V across the capacitor can be calculated using the formula: and the current can be calculated with the formula: .

Where:

 

 

Method

 

Apparatus:

Power supply, leads, ruler, calipers, clips, known capacitor, aluminium foil, paper, multi-meter and video camera.

 

Part A

Method 1

Figure 1:

Figure 1 shows how the circuit was assembled.

Information:

So using the information above, for two capacitors in series:

We could find the capacitance of the second capacitor:

Result of Method 1:

We found value of second capacitor where; . However, real capacitance of the second capacitor is , so this method could not able used to find the real capacitance of capacitor, because the value I got from calculating is very different than the real value of capacitor. The reason why this occurs will be explain more in the summary section of part A.