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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A capacitor is a component that is able to store electric charge.
If you have a battery just connected to a loop of wire, it will push electrons around the circuit.
If you break the loop of wire completely, the battery can only push a small amount of electrons up towards the break before their repellent forces, pushing each other and resisting being pushed together, overcome the electromotive force of the battery. So not very many electrons get stuck at the break.
What if you break the loop, but leave the two tips of the wire very close together, and also add two wide plates at the tips? Then electrons build up on the plate at one tip, and the plate at the other tip is being depleted of electrons and becoming positively charged. That positive charge helps attract more electrons to the negatively charged plate than the battery would be able to push there on its own.
The wider the plates and the thinner the gap, the more charge a capacitor can store. It also matters what is in the gap: if it’s air, there’s a greater risk that the electrons will arc across as lightning, compared to if a stronger insulator is inserted into the gap between plates.
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