Capacitor &
Capacitance
Capacitors are passive electronic components
consisting of two or more pieces of conducting material
separated by an insulating material. The capacitor is a
component which has the ability or "capacity" to store energy
in the form of an electrical charge producing a potential
difference (Static Voltage) across its plates, much like a small
rechargeable battery.
There are many different kinds of capacitors available from
very small capacitor beads used in resonance circuits to large
power factor correction capacitors, but they all do the same
thing, they store charge.
In its basic form, a capacitor consists of two or more parallel
conductive (metal) plates which are not connected or
touching each other, but are electrically separated either by
air or by some form of a good insulating material. This
insulating material could be waxed paper, mica, ceramic,
plastic or some form of a liquid gel as used in electrolytic
capacitors. As a good introduction to capacitors, it is worth
noting that the insulating layer between a capacitors plate is
called the Dielectric.
Capacitance is the capacity of a material
object or device to store electric charge. It is measured
by the charge in response to a difference in electric
potential, expressed as the ratio of those quantities.
Commonly recognized are two closely related notions
of capacitance: self-capacitance and mutual
capacitance. An object that can be electrically charged
exhibits self-capacitance, for which the electric
potential is measured between the object and ground.
Mutual capacitance is measured between two
components, and is particularly important in the
operation of the capacitor, an
elementary linear electronic component designed to
add capacitance to an electric circuit.
The SI unit of capacitance is the farad (symbol: F),
named after the English physicist Michael Faraday. A 1
farad capacitor, when charged with 1 coulomb of
electrical charge, has a potential difference of
1 volt between its plates. The reciprocal of capacitance
is called elastance.