From the course: Electronics Foundations: Basic Circuits

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RC circuits

RC circuits

From the course: Electronics Foundations: Basic Circuits

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RC circuits

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- Capacitors can charge and discharge energy very quickly, but they cannot do it instantaneously. When I apply a voltage to a capacitor to charge it, it takes some small amount of time for the current to flow into the capacitor to actually fill it up with charge. It's like when I blow air into a balloon to fill it up. No matter how hard I blow, the balloon takes time to fill. We can actually watch a capacitor filling up with charge by measuring how the voltage across it changes with an oscilloscope. To demonstrate how a capacitor charges, I'll use this simple circuit, which consists of a resistor and a capacitor in series with each other, connected to a voltage source. This is called an RC circuit, because it's composed of resistors, capacitors, and it has a voltage or current source to provide power. For my circuit, I'm going to use a five-volt power source. The resistor is one kiloohm, and the capacitor is 1,000…

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