Question
Question: Why is capacitance important?...
Why is capacitance important?
Solution
In physics, the term capacitance represents the property of a body to store charges, maintain potential difference in it and such bodies are termed as capacitors. Here, we will discuss the nature and construction of capacitors and then figure out the uses of capacitance and its importance.
Complete answer:
In physics, A capacitor is a device which can store charges and potential difference by itself once after it’s charged and this property of capacitor is measured as capacitance.
A general capacitor most widely used is parallel plate capacitor. It’s made of two parallel plates kept at some distance and having a definite surface area of plates. When this capacitor is connected in any electrical circuits, an electric field is produced between the plates and hence producing potential difference across it, and when this capacitor is removed it stores charge and electrical energy which can further be used in many ways.
The mathematical formula of capacitance of a parallel plate capacitor is C=d∈oA where,
A, d are the area of plates and distance between them.
∈o is known as permittivity of free space.
Importance of capacitance.
Capacitors are used as temporary electrical energy storage which is widely used for many electrical circuits.
Integrated chip timers such as timer 555 IC uses charging and discharging which is done by capacitors.
The electrical energy stored in capacitors are used as information signals in binary operations as in analogue circuits as components of integrators.
Hence, we see that there are many applications of capacitance and currently in modern technology they are used in almost every electrical circuit for various functions, due to these properties of capacitors they are very important in the field of physics and technology.
Note:
It should be remembered that, mathematically capacitance has the units called Farad. and the general formula of capacitance C is C=VQ where Q,V are charge and potential difference across the parallel plate capacitors. Most other common types of capacitors based on their physicality are spherical, cylindrical capacitors.