✔ Do Capacitors Charge And Discharge Exponentially

Do Capacitors Charge And Discharge Exponentially

- March 13, 2018

An electrical example of exponential decay is that of the discharge of a capacitor through a resistor. The discharging graphs of charge against time show a normal exponential decay graph.

Why Is A Capacitor Discharging Linearly Decreased Why Not

Capacitor Discharge

Capacitor Working Principle Charging And Discharging

When you do the math for a capacitor discharge you get an exponential decay curve.

Do capacitors charge and discharge exponentially. We can charge up the capacitor and then flip the switch and record. Charge and discharge of a capacitor figure 2. We can plot a graph using a circuit like this.

The voltage current and charge all decay exponentially during the capacitor discharge. However the charging graphs dont look the same as other exponential growth graphs. We can note the voltage and current at time intervals and plot the data which gives us the exponential graph shown on the next page.

From above we see that capacitors do not discharge at a linear rate through resistors. We can perform an experiemnt to obtain the data for us to plot a graph to show this by using the circuit below. Vt v 0 e t rc.

Physics websites show that capacitors charge and discharge exponentially. Exactly how does a capacitor discharge. This curve starts at the initial capacitor voltage v 0 and diminishes quickly at first.

A capacitor stores charge and the voltage v across the capacitor is proportional to the charge q stored given by the relationship v qc where c is called the capacitance. As time goes on the slope becomes less and less while the voltage approaches but does not reach zero. The voltage current and charge all decay exponentially during the capacitor discharge.