[34] Homemade 10nF capacitor

DEMO/GEEK: In this video, I try to answer the question... "Can we them make capacitors by using erasers?"

Capacitors are devices that store energy and then discharge it very quickly. They have lots of uses in electronics, like filtering, timing and decoupling. The unit of measurement is farad (F), but commonly we use uF, pF and nF in our circuits.

The capacitance value is influenced by the distance between the plates, the area of the plates and the dielectric material used. In this video we used paper as our dielectric, but lots of different materials can be used.

[stormrider]

Great little video :) I'm currently building key pad which runs the voice memories on my FT1200DX, its for my radio clubs annual construction competition. I'm using alternative materials (paper & copper tape etc) to the usual perf board, wires etc and found myself in need of a 10nF capacitor, whilst I would've loved to have used your idea (its a bit big) I don't have the books you used lol. On a serious note, what a great demonstration, I used a similar principle a while ago to 'tune a crystal radio set', put me slap bang in the middle of the UK's broadcast band, which was a bit of a pity as I was actually aiming for 3.66MHz lol. Tnx Lin.

[pinocleen]

I was thinking about making an inductor by drawing coils on the outside of a small paper tube, but would need better origami skills to make things like transformers/toroid's.