Electronics are becoming ever more prevalent in my uni course (I’m doing sound engineering). Knowing how your own equipment works and stuff is integral but what is a capacitor. I failed physics in school almost. What does it do. Help.
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There’s some great explanations here, but I’ll add one other bit to them, which may help you understand why they’re so useful and ubiquitous.
Capacitors are frequently compared to rechargeable batteries- they store energy, and while they use different principles (batteries use chemical energy, capacitors hold a charge difference on conductive plates), they can both release that charge and be charged up.
But capacitors can be charged and discharged *extremely* quickly. The flip side of this is that they can’t store very much energy compared to a battery (make no mistake, though- some capacitors can store enough power to hurt or even kill you).
A battery could be thought of as a giant reservoir of energy that can only be tapped slowly- it’ll keep providing that energy for a very long time, but you can only pull power out of it at a specific rate. A capacitor has a bigger input and output, allowing it to store and release energy extremely quickly, but has a smaller overall storage volume.
In sound engineering, you’ll frequently find capacitors being used for filtering- taking a noisy signal and helping to smooth it out- as well as in power supplies and amplifiers. You’ll learn more as you go further in your course, but just be aware that when you work with big amps, they can pack a wallop. 🙂
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