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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So I’ll leave construction part short, a capacitor is two plates separated by paper, sometimes rolled up, and soaked in some fluid.
It has three main functions,
1. it can store a charge, and when you combine it with inductors and resistors you can build simple timers with them.
2. Next it can smooth signals, you can use this to take a sine wave and turn it into other functions like saw waves and triangle waves. This is also part of how AC to DC converters work
3. And maybe the most important, is that it can filter wavelengths. To a DC signal, a capacitor is an open circuit, but the higher the frequency, the easier it passes thru.
Also, if it helps, a capacitor and and inductor are similar. A capacitor will charge when exposed to voltage, and discharge when the voltage is lowered or stops, so you can think of it as a component that resists changes in voltage, just like an inductor resists changes in current.
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