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Circuits and Direct Currents
RC Circuits
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Resistors and Capacitors in Series

Charging an RC Circuit

Charging an RC Circuit

(a) An RC circuit with an initially uncharged capacitor. Current flows in the direction shown as soon as the switch is closed. Mutual repulsion of like charges in the capacitor progressively slows the flow as the capacitor is charged, stopping the current when the capacitor is fully charged and Q=C⋅emf. (b) A graph of voltage across the capacitor versus time, with the switch closing at time t=0. (Note that in the two parts of the figure, the capital script E stands for emf, q stands for the charge stored on the capacitor, and τ is the RC time constant. )

Source

    Boundless vets and curates high-quality, openly licensed content from around the Internet. This particular resource used the following sources:

    "OpenStax College, DC Circuits Containing Resistors and Capacitors. February 15, 2013."
    http://cnx.org/content/m42363/latest/ OpenStax CNX CC BY 3.0.

Related Terms

  • differential equation
  • DC
  • capacitor
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