Day 15:

Day 15:

Activity #1: Measuring capacitance

For this Experiment we put aluminum foil between the page of a think physics book and set a multimeter up to measure the capacitance of this set up. In order to keep the capacitance consistent, we should have left the heavy side of the book on top.

We measured the capacitance of two separated sheets of aluminum foil which we varied in area and separation distance by folding the aluminum and adding more sheets of paper between the foils.

Our data suggests that the separation distance and the capacitance of the plates of a capacitor have a inverse relationship.

We measured  kappa,k, the dielectric constant. We calculated value of k to be 1.1,however the known value of k is actually 3.5. This is because we pressed the book in order to measure capacitance when the sheets were few.

Activity #2 Measure capacitance in series & parallel

Parallel

Series

We used a a multimeter and alligator clips to measure the capacitance of a capacitors in series and found that they  added in inverse, much as the resistors in series did.