What is a Capacitor ?

Capacitor is an electronic component, which is used to store electric charge, therefore it can also be viewed as a battery but not that strong one, although physical construction of battery is completely different from that of capacitor.

Capacitor is made up of two conducting plates separated by an insulating material called dielectric. 

                                   

 Types of Capacitors

Capacitors comes in many varieties according to different usages, they are :

• Electrolytic Capacitor
• Tantalum Capacitor
• Polyester Film Capacitor
• Polyester Film (Box Shaped) Capacitor
• Ceramic Capacitor

Funny Thing about Discovery of Capacitance

CAPACITANCE WAS DISCOVERED BY CHANCE

A Bishop of  POMERANIA ( it is a historical region on the south shore of Baltic Sea) named Ewald Georg von Kleist was doing an experiment at the close of 1745 in October.

See Pomerania on map( Its in Europe)

Von Kleist wanted to isolate the electricity. He wanted to actually trap electricity in a jar containing water and to see how it looked like when trapped inside water.

He actually put a wire connected to a high voltage electrostatic generator into a jar containing water, and hold that jar in his hand. He thought, he would be able to trap electric current coming from high voltage electrostatic generator via conducting wire into water, but nothing happened like that. Then he disconnected the conducting wire from the electrostatic generator, and when he touched that conducting wire dipped in water with his naked hand, he experienced a painful electric-shock. He was very confused with this, that how an unconnected wire gave him electric-shock. He was unaware of the fact that it was because the unconnected wire stored some of the electric charge in it when it was connected to electrostatic generator. This concept of storage of electric charge by conductors later on formed the basis for making capacitors.

Later on the Dutch physicist Pieter van Musschenbroek invented a similar capacitor which he named Leyden jar, after the name of Leyden University, where he worked.

It is very astonishing for me to realize that when people in our country were ruled by the Mughal Dynasty and Britishers were about to come to rule India, there were also people in other parts of world who were busy in discovering and inventing things.

Fun with Electronics

Today I really had good time, when I started examining my P.S.U.(Power Supply Unit) of my PC. Few days back, the P.S.U. blew off due to fluctuation in the voltage. I didn't connect my PC via any U.P.S.(Uninterrupted Power Supply) which could be the possible reason of why my P.S.U. blew off.

I went to a mechanic, he asked me to submit the P.S.U. and the repair would cost around  Rs 400. Actually there were two thoughts coming in my mind

1.  Why shouldn't I do it by myself, after all, that mechanic was hardly a graduate, where on the other side, I am a "Computer Engineer".
2. I am a skinflint .

The first thing I did, as all use to do, was watching YOU_TUBE VIDEOS . I got to know that a fuse could have blown and that can be replaced with not much difficulty. I was mesmerized and felt very happy that I have saved Rs 400, because the solution to this problem seemed so easy. I started kind of making inventory of things which I would be requiring for my little Sci-Fi Expedition. I went to one and only shop of our town to buy 1) a fuse 2) Soldering iron 3) Solder wire

The shopkeeper proved to be another THUG , he charged me a fuse of just few paise to Rs 10 and Soldering iron of just Rs 30 to Rs 60 and Solder wire of Rs 2 to Rs 10. Being helpless, because there was not any other such shop in our small town, I purchased all those tools for my Sci-Fi Expedition .

I came home and started my exploration, I extracted my P.S.U. from the PC cabinet and started removing its bad fuse. I fixed it with brand new fuse which I bought from that THUG. The feeling was like I landed on the moon or was just about to initiate a Rocket Launch , Wow, I can't explain it how I felt at that moment.
Now the only thing left was to check by plugging it again and see whether my little expedition succeeded or not. I plugged the wire into the socket, everything was fine, the fuse was tight and good, I was very happy and confident and full of excitement to see my P.S.U. work again.
So, the moment came when I was about to press THE MIGHTY SWITCH,

I pressed it and my face was like

Mission Failed !!