fairfolio
Saved Projects

Which Type of Capacitor Charges the Fastest?

CSEF · 2019 Electronics & Electromagnetics

Sandul A. Henry · Portola (Gaspar de) Highly Gifted Magnet Middle School, Tarzana, Los Angeles County

Overview

Objectives The objective of this experiment is to see which type of capacitor charges the fastest. Methods 3 types of capacitors, breadboard, 1 resistor, digital multimeter, power supply, stopwatch and wires. Tested time taken to charge capacitor to maximum capacity using 1.5 volts as an input. Results Each capacitor was tested 3 times, and an average time was calculated. Conclusions A mylar/film capacitor charged faster than a tantalum or ceramic capacitor. It was concluded that this is because the mylar/film capacitor's metal plates, inside the capacitor, had the largest surface area and the dielectric was thinner.

Summary statement

As measured by the time taken to charge the capacitors, it was concluded that not only the material, but other internal features made the difference.

Help received

I did all the research by myself, and used the equipment in one of the electronic labs at the California State University, Northridge, under the watchful eye of the electronic tech.

Competition history

  • CSEF 2019 Electronics & Electromagnetics · Entry J1014

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google