We’ve just completed the topic on capacitors in dc circuits, finishing off with a detailed study of the graphs obtained for current & voltage against time when a capacitor is charged or discharged through a series resistor. There are some additional notes and practice questions at the end of this post but please watch the clips first.
This introduction to capacitors from the nice people at Make Magazine is a good starting point.
The S-cool revision site has some helpful notes and illustrations on capacitor behaviour; try page 1 (how capacitors work) and page 2 (charging and discharging).
Here is a video that covers some of the areas we discussed in class. Ignore the maths at the end of each section of the film, you won’t need it. Notice how the man in the film uses a lightbulb, rather than an ammeter, to show when the current is large or small. Clever, eh?
One use of capacitors you should know about is the flashing lamp. We’ll cover this application next week.
I compared normal electrolytic capacitors to a 10F supercapacitor, and we observed its superior performance in terms of energy storage. This video goes one step further and shows the fun you could have with an ultracapacitor. Do not try this at home!
Of course, you can always make your own capacitor with paper and electrically conductive paint.
Now download the pdf below. It contains notes to help with your prelim revision and some extra capacitor problems.
Thanks to Fife Science for the original pdf from Martin Cunningham.
I am moving this site to a new hosting company during the holidays. You might notice some broken links or missing videos. Please let me know by leaving a comment so I can fix anything I have missed.
Past papers are currently unavailable on the AH, Higher & Int2 pages. Some (not all) can be found by typing “pastpaper” in the search box at the top of the page.
Thank you to everyone who voted for this blog in the education blog awards. Fizzics has made it to the last 10 and the judges will decide on a winner later this month.
Mr Connor from Golspie has also made it to the last 10 teacher blogs, so Highland teachers make up 20% of the shortlist for teacher blog of the year!
I’ve been nominated for the 2011 Education Blog Awards in the Teacher Blog category. You can vote for my blog by clicking on the picture below. The last day for voting is 30th April.
We had 7 weeks of summer holiday this year and it still didn’t seem long enough! Hope you had a great holiday and hope you remember to come back on Tuesday.
So what about the exam results, then?
There were great performances at all levels, from Standard Grade to Advanced Higher. Congratulations to you all!
I hope that you enjoyed your summer break and are ready to get back to work in the Physics lab. For those of you already thinking about the October holidays, I thought I might suggest Butlins. They are running an interesting holiday idea with some Physics thrown in for free.
The Physics department has purchased a 1 year site license for a really smart software package called Crocodile Physics. The terms of the license allow any pupil in the school to download a copy for home use. If you are interested, mac and windows versions of the software can be obtained by going to www.crocodilia.com and logging in with the user name “student.thurso” and the password your teacher will give you (I can’t publish the password here). Select Crocodile Physics from the drop-down menu and log in. Go to the download section to get your copy of the software.
The site also contains sample models for you to download and try out. Ask me if you want to know more about them.
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