Lab4 PDF
Lab4 PDF
Lab4 PDF
RC Circuits
4.1 Objectives
• Observe and qualitatively describe the charging and discharging (de-
cay) of the voltage on a capacitor.
4.2 Introduction
We continue our journey into electric circuits by learning about another
circuit component, the capacitor. Like the name implies, “capacitors” have
the physical capability of storing electrical charge. Many things can be
accidental capacitors. Most electrical components have some amount of
capacitance within them, but some devices are specifically manufactured
to do the sole job of being capacitors by themselves.1 The capacitors in
today’s lab will lose their charge rather quickly, but still slowly enough for
humans to watch it happen. Capacitors in electrical circuits can have very
di↵erent characteristic times for charging and discharging.
1
Batteries, in fact, are actually capacitors that discharge very, very slowly (they take
a while to lose their charge) and can lose their overall e↵ectiveness through that loss.
59
4. RC Circuits
4.4 Theory
The Capacitor
A capacitor is a device that stores electrical charge. The simplest kind is a
“parallel-plate” capacitor: two flat metal plates placed nearly parallel and
separated by an insulating material such as dry air, plastic or ceramic. Such
a device is shown schematically in Fig. 4.1.
Here is a description of how a capacitor stores electrical energy. If
we connect the two plates to a battery in a circuit, as shown in Fig. 4.1,
the battery will drive charges around the circuit as an electric current.
When the charges reach the plates they can’t go any further because of the
insulating gap so they collect on the plates, one plate becoming positively
charged and the other negatively charged. This slow buildup of electric
charge actually begins to resist the addition of more charge as a voltage
2
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hph.html
begins to build across the plates, thus opposing the action of the battery.
As a consequence, the current flowing in the circuit gets less and less (i.e. it
decays), falling to zero when the “back-voltage” on the capacitor is exactly
equal and opposite to the battery voltage.
If we were to quickly disconnect the battery without touching the plates,
the charge would remain on the plates. You could literally walk around with
this “stored” charge. Because the two plates have di↵erent signs of electric
charge, there is a net electric field between the two plates. Hence, there
is a voltage di↵erence across the plates. If, some time later, we connect
the plates again in a circuit, say this time with a light bulb in place of
the battery, the plates will discharge through the bulb: the electrons on
the negatively charged plate will move around the circuit through the bulb
to the positive plate until all the charges are equalized. During this short
discharge period a current flows and the bulb will light up. The capacitor
stored electrical energy from its original charging by the battery and then
discharged it through the light bulb. The speed with which the discharge
process (and conversely the charging process) can take place is limited by
the resistance R of the circuit connecting the plates and by the capacitance
C of the capacitor (a measure of its ability to hold charge).
RC Circuit
An RC circuit is a circuit with a resistor and a capacitor in series connected
to a voltage source such as a battery.
As with circuits made up only of resistors, electrical current can flow in
this RC circuit with one modification. A battery connected in series with
a resistor will produce a constant current. The same battery in series with
a capacitor will produce a time-varying current, which decays gradually to
zero as the capacitor charges up. If the battery is removed and the circuit
reconnected without the battery, a current will flow (for a short time) in
the opposite direction as the capacitor “discharges.” A measure of how
long these transient currents last in a given circuit is given by the time
constant ⌧ .
The time it takes for these transient currents to decay depends on the
resistance (R) and capacitance (C). The resistor resists the flow of current;
it thus slows down the decay. The capacitance measures “capacity” to
hold charge: like a bucket of water, a larger capacity container takes longer
to empty than a smaller capacity container. Thus, the time constant of
the circuit gets larger for larger R and C. In detail, using the units of
capacitance which are “farads”,
Isn’t it strange that ohms times farads equals seconds? Like many things
in the physical world, it is just not intuitive. We can at least show this
by breaking the units down. From Ohm’s Law, R = V /I. Current is
the amount of charge flowing per time, so I = Q/t. Capacitance is
proportional to how much charge can be stored per voltage applied, or
C = Q/V . So,
RC = R ⇥ C
V Q
= ⇥
I V
Q
=
I
Q
=
Q/t
=t
The current does not fall to zero at time ⌧ . Instead, ⌧ is the time it takes
for the voltage of the discharging capacitor to drop to 37% of its original
value. It takes 5 to 6 ⌧ s for the current to decay to essentially zero amps.
Just as it takes time for the charged capacitor to discharge, it takes time to
charge the capacitor. Due to the unavoidable presence of resistance in the
circuit, the charge on the capacitor and its stored energy only approaches
an essentially final (steady-state) value after a period of several times the
time constant of the circuit elements employed.
⇣ t
⌘
t
VC (t) = V0 1 e⌧ (4.2) VR (t) = V0 e ⌧ (4.3)
where e is the base of the natural logarithm and V0 is the initial voltage.
The value of e is approximately 2.718. Remember that the time constant ⌧
of a circuit depends on capacitance and resistance as ⌧ = RC. When the
time t is exactly equal to 1 time constant ⌧ then t = ⌧ and the previous
equations become
1
VC = V0 1 e VR = V0 e 1
(4.4) (4.5)
⇡ 0.63V0 ⇡ 0.37V0
This means that after t = ⌧ seconds, the capacitor has been charged
to 63% of its final value and the voltage across the resistor has dropped to
37% of its peak (initial) value. After a very long time, the voltage across
the capacitor will essentially be equal to the battery’s voltage, V0 , and the
voltage across the resistor will be (for all practical purposes) zero.
(a) Voltage across the capacitor (b) Voltage across the resistor VR .
VC .
Discharging
If we flip the switch to the position shown in Fig. 4.2(b), so that the battery
is no longer included in the circuit, we will discharge the capacitor. Now
the charge stored on the capacitor is free to leave the plates and will cause
a current to flow. The current will be the largest at the beginning, t = 0,
and will decay away as charge leaves the capacitor’s plates. Since the cur-
rent is decreasing the voltage di↵erence across the resistor is also decreasing
(Ohm’s law again). Fig. 4.4 graphs the behavior of the voltage across the
capacitor and resistor as a function of the time constant, ⌧ , of the circuit
for a discharging capacitor. For the case when the capacitor is discharging
notice that both the voltage across the capacitor and the resistor are de-
caying to zero. It is critical to remember that the total voltage between the
capacitor and the resistor must add up to the applied voltage (Kirchho↵’s
loop law). When the circuit is disconnected from the power supply, then
(a) Voltage across the capacitor VC . (b) Voltage across the resistor VR .
the sum of the voltages must be zero so the graph of the voltage across the
resistor must be increasing from V0 to zero.
For the case when the capacitor is discharging, the voltages across the
capacitor, VC , and resistor, VR , are given by
t t
VC = V0 e ⌧ (4.6) VR = V0 e ⌧ (4.7)
Compare these equations to the ones given for when the capacitor is
charging and make sure you understand the di↵erences.
It is usually easier to interpret a graph when the plot gives a straight
line. For this lab we want to plot our voltages versus time, however, all
of our equations for VC and VR involve exponentials. In order to get a
straight line on our graphs we will use the logarithm function to find an
equation that looks like a straight line. First, we divide the voltage across
the capacitor, VC , by the initial voltage, V0 , giving
VC t
=e⌧ (4.8)
V0
Then we calculate the natural logarithm3
3
The natural logarithm of x, ln(x), asks the question, “e raised to what power equals
x?” For example, to find ln e2 , we ask, “e raised to what power equals e2 ?” e raised
to the power 2 equals e2 , so ln e2 = 2. We can thus use the natural logarithm to get
just the power of e in an equation.
This last equation is a straight line, even though it may not look like
one at first glance. If y = mx + b is the equation of our straight line, then:
1) time t is the independent variable x, 2) the term with the voltage VC
that changes with time is the dependent variable y, and 3) the slope m is
everything that is multiplied by the independent variable t. In this case,
there is no term added to the t term, so the y-intercept b is zero. (You’ll
need this for Question 1).
Here is a more visual comparison between the equation for a straight
line and Eq. 4.9 which is described in words above.
y = mx + b
✓ ◆
VC t
ln = +0
V0 ⌧
✓ ◆
VC
y = ln 1
V0 m=
⌧
x=t b=0
other hand, the voltage across the resistor changes very quickly to match
the power supply voltage, but then dies down over time (as the capacitor
gains charge and slows the current down).
Figure 4.5: Voltage during repeated cycles of charging and discharging for
(top to bottom) the battery (which is constant at V0 or o↵), the capacitor,
and the resistor.
Figure 4.6: Voltages for repeated charging and discharging with a signal
generator.
4.6 Equipment
• Signal generator (see Figure 4.10)
• DC power supply
• Circuit breadboard
Safety Tips
• When plugging or unplugging wires, first turn o↵ all electronics
that are connected or will become connected to the circuit. Today
there is one instance where you will unplug first before turning o↵ the
power supply. Be sure to not touch the ends of the wires while or
after you are unplugging them.
4.7 Procedure
Measuring the time constant
First we want to measure the time constant ⌧ . This means we need to
charge the capacitor fully, then let it discharge through a resistor while we
measure the voltage as it changes over time.
1. Build the charging circuit shown in Fig. 4.8(a). Note that the resistor
should only be attached at one end — it’s dangling here. We place
it in the circuit so that it is convenient to convert to the discharging
circuit in Fig. 4.8(b). Be sure to set the multimeter to read DC
voltage. Use the DC power supply, a 100 k⌦ resistor, and a 1 000 µF
capacitor. Check the color code of the resistor to verify that it is 100
k⌦ and check its tolerance. Your instructor will tell you the tolerance
of the capacitor, which is likely to be ±20%. The resistor codes can
be found in Fig. 4.7.
Figure 4.8: Circuit schematics for the measurement of the time constant ⌧ .
3. Build the discharging circuit shown in Fig. 4.8(b). Find a banana plug
from a bucket in the front of the room. In this circuit, it will clip to
another wire connector and make an e↵ective 4 switch. After building
the circuit shown in this figure with your “switch” unconnected (i.e
“open”) the capacitor should still be charged from the previous step
but you should notice that the voltage is slowly decreasing.
4. Close the switch by connecting the banana plug and notice the volt-
meter starts to register that the charge on the capacitor is decreasing
as it discharges through the resistor. Let it go until the voltage across
the capacitor has dropped to about 10 or 11 volts, then start the timer
and record the time and voltage in Table 1 of your spreadsheet. Con-
tinue recording the voltage across the capacitor once every 10 seconds
until your timer has reached 300 seconds.
⇣ ⌘
5. Have Excel calculate VVC0 and ln VVC0 . V0 is the initial voltage across
the capacitor when you start taking data so V0 = VC at t = 0. Then,
import your data into Kaleidagraph.
6. Make a plot of the voltage ratio VVC0 versus time. Does it look similar
to Fig. 4.4(a)? Does your graph fall almost to 0 after 5 or 6 ⌧ s?
⇣ ⌘
7. Now make a plot of ln VVC0 versus time. Have Kaleidagraph fit your
graph with a best-fit line. Use the curve fit parameters to determine
the time constant of your circuit and its uncertainty (Questions 1–2).
You’ll have to think about the slope of the line as you plotted it and
the time constant as it appears in the formula Eq. 4.9.
4
We physicists use “e↵ective” to mean “has the same e↵ect as” rather than “useful”.
So here, an “e↵ective switch” is a setup that has the same e↵ect as a switch would. This
makes for some good wordplay sometimes.
1. Use a 100 ⌦ resistor (this is a di↵erent resistor from the first part
of the lab!), a 1 000 µF capacitor, an LED, and a signal generator to
build the circuit shown in Fig. 4.9.
2. When you turn on the the signal generator, it will default to a sine
wave. Change it to a square wave. Set the amplitude of the signal
generator to maximum and set the frequency to 0.500 Hz. Record
your observations (Question 4).
Figure 4.10: The Signal Generator produces output of a frequency you can
control with the “Adjust” knob in the middle, reading out the frequency
in Hertz in the window. It also generates signals of di↵erent shapes: sine
wave, triangle wave, and square wave. You switch from one to the other
with the buttons in the top yellow rectangle. You connect to the output of
the Signal Generator at the red and black connectors shown in the lower
right yellow rectangle.
Figure 4.11: The little white object on the left is a light-emitting diode (an
“LED”) for the second part of the lab. The blue object on the right is the
capacitor that we’ll use in this lab. Both are in the plastic bucket of parts.
4.8 Questions
Uncertainties
From the multiplication rule for uncertainties from Appendix A,
✓ ◆
R C
(⌧ ) = (RC) = RC + . (4.10)
R C
(slope)
⌧ = |⌧ | (4.11)
slope
⇣ ⌘
VC
1. Use Eq. 4.9 to determine ⌧ and ⌧ from your plot of ln V0
vs. time.
Show all your work for the calculations, including formulas and units.
3. After charging the capacitor and disconnecting the power supply, you
observed that the voltage measured by the voltmeter across the ca-
pacitor slowly decreased. What are possible explanations for this
observation?