Capacitors and Inductors

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Capacitors and Inductors

But in science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.

—Francis Darwin

Enhancing Your Skills and Your Career

ABET EC 2000 criteria (3.c), “an ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs.”

The “ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs” is why engineers are hired. That is why this is the most important technical skill that an engineer has. Interestingly, your success as an engineer is directly proportional to your ability to communicate but your being able to design is wh y you will be hired in the first place.

Design takes place when you ha ve what is termed an open-ended problem that eventually is defined by the solution. Within the context of this course or te xtbook, we can only e xplore some of the elements of design. Pursuing all of the steps of our problem-solving technique teaches you se veral of the most important elements of the design process.

Probably the most important part of design is clearly defining what the system, component, process, or , in our case, problem is. Rarely is an engineer given a perfectly clear assignment. Therefore, as a student, you can develop and enhance this skill by asking yourself, your colleagues, or your professors questions designed to clarify the problem statement.

Exploring alternati ve solutions is another important part of the design process. Again, as a student, you can practice this part of the de sign process on almost every problem you work.

Evaluating your solutions is critical to any engineering assignment. Again, this is a skill that you as a student can practice on every problem you work.

Photo by Charles Alexander

Learning Objectives

By using the information and exercises in this chapter you will be able to:

• 1. Fully understand the volt-amp characteristics of capacitors and inductors and their use in basic circuits.
• 2. Explain how capacitors behave when combined in parallel and in series.
• 3. Understand how inductors behave when combined in parallel and in series.
• 4. Know how to create integrators using capacitors and op amps.
• 5. Learn how to create differentiators and their limitations.
• 6. Learn how to create analog computers and to understand how they can be used to solve linear differential equations.

In contrast to a resistor, which spends or dissipates energy irreversibly, an inductor or capacitor stores or releases energy (i.e., has a memory).