DEPARTMENT OF TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERING

Faculty Of Engineering & Technology

ELETRICAL WORKSHOP (TE-119)
Capacitors #04
Roll no: Date:
Checked by: Score:

Selection Utilization Experimental Experimental Lab Safety Teamwork Technical Score =

of of Lab Data Data Precaution During Cleanliness 2
Equipment Tools & Collection Analysis s LabTask and × obtained marks
35
(0 to 5) Calibratio (0 to 5) (0 to 5) (0 to 5) (0 to 5) Organization
n (0 to 5)
(0 to 5)

Performance Objective: To become familiar with Capacitors, their types and reading their values

Apparatus:

1). A Digital Multimeter (DMM)

2). Few Electrolytic and Non Electrolytic Capacitors

Theory: [30 Minutes]

A capacitor is an electronic component used to store electric charge. Together with resistors and
inductors, it is the most frequently used component in electronics. Capacitors are made up of two metallic
plates having an insulator(also called a Dielectric) in between them, which enables it to store charges in
the form of an electric field. The kind of dielectric used along with several other factors, determines how
much charge the capacitor can store. Whenever the terminals of a capacitor are connected across a
battery, there is a deficiency of electrons on one plate and an excess of electrons on the other. This creates
a potential difference between the two plates and gives rise to an electric field. The capacity of a
Capacitor to store charges is known as its capacitance which has the unit Farad (F), however, Farad is
typically a big unit and one usually talks about capacitance in much smaller units such as µF,nF and pF
etc.

There are two types of capacitors, Electrolytic and Non Electrolytic (symbols shown below).

Figure 4.1: Symbol of Electrolytic (a) Non-Electrolytic (b) Capacitors

Electrolytic capacitors are polarized in that they need to be connected the correct way round (+ve supply
to +ve terminal and –ve supply to –ve terminal) to charge them. They come in large as well as small
values but are usually greater than 1µf. They come in two main types; one consists of metal foils with

Page 1 of 5
oxide insulators (electrolytic) and hence is simply called an Electrolytic Capacitor. The other type of
polarized capacitors is Tantalum capacitors. The positive end is marked by a “+” and the negative lead is
marked by a “-“. Since these capacitors are usually physically large, their values are printed on them
along with their voltage ratings and tolerances. Electrolytic capacitors are used for filtering out ripples in
DC power supplies.

Non-Electrolytic capacitors on the other hand can be charged with any polarity and are thus
non-polarized. They use Mica, Glass, Paper, Ceramic, Porcelain, Polycarbonate and Wax as the dielectric
and are usually less than 1µf. They are usually used in AC circuits along with resistors and inductors to
perform mathematical operations and filtering.

Ideal capacitors have infinite resistance. Real capacitors show a very high resistance in the order of 100’s
of Kilo Ohms, in fact this is one way to check whether a capacitor is faulty or not. When connected across
a multimeter, with the range set to measure up to 1MΩ, a working capacitor would show zero first and
gradually rise to a very high value (this is because the capacitor is being charged by the battery of the
multimeter), if it is faulty, than it will stay at zero and the capacitor is said to have become shorted, if it
the capacitor has become opened, there will be no reading on the multimeter.

Electrolytic capacitors, as mentioned before have values printed on them, on the other hand, the values of
non electrolytic capacitors have to be decoded. This takes in to consideration a general rule plus some
common sense with regard to the value non electrolytic capacitors can have i-e <1µF. The general rule is

(1stDigit) (2nd Digit) x 10Multiplier µF/pF

Determining the unit is where the consideration kicks in, say if a capacitor has the number 102 written on
it, and this is how one would decode its value,

10x102 pF= 1000pF=1nF

We took the unit to be pF because if we considered it to be µF, the capacitance would come out to be 1mF
which would be too large a value for non-electrolytic capacitors. As another example, let’s say that the
number written on the capacitor is .02, now the value of this capacitor would be decoded as
.02µF since .02pF is too small a capacitance value.

Some capacitors also have several suffixes following the coded values, the symbols for the tolerances and
their corresponding values are shown in the table below:

Tolerance Code Tolerance Value

Z (For Large capacitors) +80%, -20%
M ±20%
K ±10%
J ±5%
G ±2%
F ±1%
D ±0.5%
C ±0.25%
B ±0.1%

Page 2 of 5
 A ±0.05%
Z (For Small Precision Capacitors) ±0.025%
N ±0.02%
Table 4.1: Capacitor tolerance codes and values

[30 Minutes]

The capacitors discussed so far were fixed value capacitors; there are also variable capacitors that allow
us to vary the capacitance. This is achieved in two ways, in one method, there is a set of fixed (stator)
plates and some movable (rotor) plates in between those stator plates, the movable plates can be brought
into and taken out of the mesh by means of a shaft thus varying the capacitance, in the next method one
has a mechanism for moving the dielectric thus changing the capacitance. The capacitance of variable
capacitors ranges between 1pF and 500pF. Variable capacitors of very small value are known as Trimmer
capacitors. These are used in radios for tuning purpose. Symbols are shown on the next page:

(a) (b)
Figure 4.2: Symbol of Variable (a) Trimmer (b) Capacitors
Every capacitor has a voltage rating for which it can be used, if the capacitor is supplied with a voltage
greater than the rating, it will result in it getting damaged.Some real capacitors are shown below

Figure 4.3: Some real Capacitors

Page 3 of 5
Procedure: [60 Minutes]
1. Take a Multimeter that can measure capacitance, set it to measure resistance with the range set at
2MΩ.
2. Take a few capacitors (polarized and non polarized). Taking each capacitor one at a time, use the
method described in the theory to check whether the capacitor is faulty or not and write down
your observation in the table.
3. Now set the multimeter to measure capacitance, decode/read the capacitance value and write it
down in Column 3 of the observation table, measure the capacitance with the multimeter and
write down in the observation table as well.

Observations:

S 1 2 3
N.o Polarized/Non-Polarized Value Implication
Faulty or not faulty
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Table 4.2: Checking a capacitor

S 1 2 3 4 5 6
N.o Polarized/Non- Value Decoded/Read Measured Differenc Percent
Polarized Capacitance Value e Error
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Table 4.3: Tolerance checking of a capacitor

Questions: [60 Minutes]

1. What happens to the overall capacitance if we connect two capacitors in series or in parallel?

_____________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________

2. Decode the following capacitance values:

i. 104 ii. 560 iii.474

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Page 4 of 5
3. Write down some of the applications in which capacitors are used.

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________

4. The storage of electric charge in a capacitor is often likened to the storage of water in a
vessel:

Complete this analogy, relating the electrical quantities of charge (Q), voltage (E or V), and
capacitance (C) to the quantities of water height, water volume, and vessel dimensions.

Answer here.

5. A capacitor has a label on it saying, "100 WVDC". What does this label mean? What is the
consequence of exceeding this rating?

Answer here.

Page 5 of 5