Things To Consider When Choosing A Capacitor For Your Project

Things To Consider When Choosing A Capacitor For Your Project

There are so many things to consider when choosing a capacitor for your project. Voltage and capacitance are just the tip of the iceberg. Datasheets will be listing characteristics such as ESR, ESL, Resonant Frequency, Dissipation factor and more. In this video we look some of the most popular types of capacitors and discuss their characteristics.

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Soldering Station: Sealody ???????

[stephenaustin]

As a (retired) physician, I had no trouble at all deciphering your handwriting.

[amjadiqbal]

Wonderful brief on selecting a capacitor for different projects۔
Like a supply circuit or a radio control.
👏❤

[craignca]

As someone who's been in electronics all my life, I found this video a good refresher.

[Enigma]

6:42 You seem to imply that ESR and Xc are the same thing, they are not. ESR is the purely resistive component, Xc (capacitive reactance) is the AC component. They add together to form the total impedance. To put it mathematically, Z(omega) = R + jX(omega), or ESR + Xc at a given frequency.

[warrenking]

Paul, great video, you touch on a lot of factors that are parts of selecting capacitors. The main one as you stated is ESR and resonate frequency. I learned some things that i did not know, which makes this video great

[Jimwill]

Out of curiosity I looked for the dielectric constant of air. Air capacitors are not used as much in digital circuits, but if you are restoring old radio's and such you will find the tuning capacitor is simply metal plates that are separated by air. Anyway, I found that a vacuum (I guess there are a few specialized vacuum caps) has a constant of 1. Air has a constant of 1.00059, I assume it changes based on humidity! Almost the same as a vacuum!!!

[aviandragon]

A good demonstration video might be to find a highly inductive perfboard/breadboard and demonstrate proper sizing and placement with the scope. Unwanted resonance can easily wreak havoc on logic circuits and the power feeding them.

[amjadiqbal]

Would want if you could please include practical breadboard circuit example.

[waynegram]

PAUL, what is the formula for the insertion loss of a capacitor? how do you compute the insertion loss of a capacitor? Dissipation Loss is ESR/Xc = Dissipation, but you said to calculating and computing for ESR is getting the Xc. ESR and Xc are two different things. How do you calculate to get ESR?

[shagreobe]

idea... things to consider when choosing a (resistor?, inductor, diode, transformer etc)

[eliasgeorge]

A follow up could be comparing the pros and cons of each class again the other. Electrolytics will eventually go bad and corrode a circuit after a leak or explosion. Yikes! Many a C64 has succumbed to such a terrible fate.