Charging and Discharging a Capacitor

Claimed by SHoward

The main purpose of having a capacitor in a circuit is to store electric charge. For intro physics you can almost think of them as a battery.

The Main Idea

Discharging a Capacitor

A circuit with a charged capacitor has an electric fringe field inside the wire. This field creates an electron current. The electron current will move opposite the direction of the electric field. However, so long as the electron current is running, the capacitor is being discharged. The electron current is moving negative charges away from the negatively charged plate and towards the positively charged plate. Once the charges even out or are neutralized the electric field will cease to exist. Therefore the current stops running.

In the example where the charged capacitor is connected to a light bulb you can see the electric field is large in the beginning but decreases over time. The electron current is also greater in the beginning and decreases over time. Because of this the light bulb starts out shining brightly but slowly dims and goes out.

Charging a Capacitor

Charging a capacitor isn’t much more difficult than discharging and the same principles still apply. The circuit consists of two batteries, a light bulb, and a capacitor. Essentially, the electron current from the batteries will continue to run until the circuit reaches equilibrium (the capacitor is “full”). Just like when discharging, the bulb starts out bright while the electron current is running, but it slowly dims and goes out as the capacitor charges.

The electron current will flow out the negative end of the battery as usual (conventional current will exit the positive end). Positive charges begin to build up on the right plate and negative charges on the left. The electric field slowly decreases until the net electric field is 0. The fringe field is equal and opposite to the electric field caused by everything else.

If you were to draw a box around the capacitor and label it with positive and negative ends it would look like a battery. It also behaves like a battery. The electron current will continue to flow and the electric field will continue to exist until the potential difference across the capacitor is equal to that of the batteries (sum of emf of all batteries in the circuit).

Resistors

The amount of resistance in the circuit will determine how long it takes a capacitor to charge or discharge. The less resistance (a light bulb with a thicker filament) the faster the capacitor will charge or discharge. The more resistance (a light bulb with a thin filament) the longer it will take the capacitor to charge or discharge. The thicker filament bulb will be brighter, but won't last as long as a thin filament bulb. You can convince yourself of this by using V = IR. The larger the resistance the smaller the current.

A Mathematical Model

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A Computational Model

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