Recently installed some speakers and noticed they had inductors on them.
In: Engineering
As stated, they resist changes in current. They’re basically the complement to capacitors, which resist changes in voltage. The function in circuitry is usually related to current regulation or signal filtering.
The way they do this is by having several loops of wire to create a small electromagnetic field. If you have current running through the wire, then there’s a resulting magnetic field created with a strength proportional to the current.
If you change the current, then you end up changing the strength of the magnetic field. This change then creates an *opposing* current to the wire current. This is what’s called counter-electromotive force, or counter-EMF. Depending on the size of the coil (and also whether a core is used), this can be a small effect (low inductance rating), or it could have a huge effect (very high inductance rating).
Just like capacitors, don’t trust anything with inductors to be discharged after removal of power.
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