MEHRAN UNIVERSITY OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY,

JAMSHORO
Department of Electronic Engineering
Electronic Workshop (ES-102)
24ES

Lab # 4 Capacitors

Name Roll #
Signature of Lab Tutor Date

OBJECTIVE(S)

# # Of Lectures CLO Taxonomy level

Topic
The purpose of this lab is to become familiar
1 with Capacitors, their types and reading 3 2,4 P2,A2
their values.

OUTCOME(S)

a. An ability to use the techniques, skills, and modern PLO5: Modern Tool Usage
engineering tools necessary for engineering practice.
b. An ability to function on multi-disciplinary teams PLO9: Individual and Team Work

RUBRICS:

Performance Metric Good (5-4) Average (3-2) Poor (1-0) Score

Apply Applies the appropriate Applies the relevant Fails to apply
Knowledge knowledge and concepts knowledge and concept relevant
to the problem with to the problem, possibly knowledge and
accuracy and in a roundabout way; concepts to the
proficiency; shows understands the major problem;
precise understanding points of the knowledge, misunderstands
of these knowledge and with possible or fails to recall
concepts. misunderstanding or critical points.
failure to recall minor
points;
Equipment Logically and carefully Able to select Does not
Selection and selects equipment to be equipment to be used understand the
Setup used for the experiment; for the experiment with connection
correctly setup the guidance; correctly between the
connection/wiring of the setup the equipment and
equipment connection/wiring of the
the equipment, with measurement
minor error to be used; or

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 did not know
how to setup
the
connection/
wiring
Equipment Operates equipment in Operates equipment in Does not know
Operation correct & careful fashion, correct & careful how to operate
selects optimum fashion, with guidance, equipment; has
range/setting for understand the no knowledge of
operation optimum range/setting measurement
for operation optimum
range/setting
for operation
Participation Plays actively the Plays own role Frequently
assigned role, takes on appropriately, and absent,
extra work to assist ineffective, and
blames
Teamwork Actively engages and Cooperates with other Distracts or
cooperates with other group members in a discourages
group members in an reasonable manner. other group
members from
effective manner.
conducting the
experiment.

Equipment:

1. A Digital Multimeter (DMM)

2. Few Electrolytic and Non Electrolytic Capacitors

Theory:
A capacitor is an electronic component used to store electric charge. Together with resistors and
inductors, it is the most frequently used component in electronics. Capacitors are made up of two
metallic plates having an insulator (also called a Dielectric) in between them, which enables it to store
charges in the form of an electric field. The kind of dielectric used along with several other factors,
determines how much charge the capacitor can store. Whenever the terminals of a capacitor are
connected across a battery, there is a deficiency of electrons on one plate and an excess of electrons on
the other. This creates a potential difference between the two plates and gives rise to an electric field.
The capacity of a Capacitor to store charges is known as its capacitance which has the unit Farad (F),
however, Farad is typically a big unit and one usually talks about capacitance in much smaller units such
as µF, nF and pF etc.

There are two types of capacitors, Electrolytic and Non-Electrolytic (symbols shown below).

Figure 4.1: Symbol of (a) Electrolytic (b) non-Electrolytic Capacitors

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Electrolytic capacitors are polarized in that they need to be connected the correct way round (+ve
supply to +ve terminal and –ve supply to –ve terminal) to charge them. They come in large as well as
small values but are usually greater than 1µf.

Non-Electrolytic capacitors on the other hand can be charged with any polarity and are thus non-
polarized. They use Mica, Glass, Paper, Ceramic, Porcelain, Polycarbonate and Wax as the dielectric and
are usually less than 1µf. They are usually used in AC circuits along with resistors and inductors to
perform mathematical operations and filtering.

Ideal capacitors have infinite resistance. Real capacitors show a very high resistance in the order of 100’s
of Kilo Ohms, in fact this is one way to check whether a capacitor is faulty or not. When connected
across a multimeter, with the range set to measure up to 1MΩ, a working capacitor would show zero
first and gradually rise to a very high value (this is because the capacitor is being charged by the battery
of the multimeter), if it is faulty, than it will stay at zero and the capacitor is said to have become
shorted, if it the capacitor has become opened, there will be no reading on the multimeter.

Electrolytic capacitors, as mentioned before have values printed on them, on the other hand, the values
of non-electrolytic capacitors have to be decoded. This takes in to consideration a general rule plus
some common sense with regard to the value non electrolytic capacitors can have i-e <1µF. The general
rule is

(1st Digit) (2nd Digit) x 10Multiplier µF/pF

Determining the unit is where the consideration kicks in, say if a capacitor has the number 102 written
on it, and this is how one would decode its value,

10x102 pF= 1000pF=1nF

We took the unit to be pF because if we considered it to be µF, the capacitance would come out to be
1mF which would be too large a value for non-electrolytic capacitors. As another example, let’s say that
the number written on the capacitor is .02, now the value of this capacitor would be decoded as
.02µF since .02pF is too small a capacitance value.
Some capacitors also have several suffixes following the coded values, the symbols for the tolerances
and their corresponding values are shown in the table below:

Table 4.1: Capacitor tolerance codes and values

Tolerance Code Tolerance Value

Z (For Large capacitors) +80%, -20%
M ±20%
K ±10%
J ±5%
G ±2%
F ±1%
D ±0.5%

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 C ±0.25%
B ±0.1%
A ±0.05%
Z (For Small Precision Capacitors) ±0.025%
N ±0.02%

The capacitors discussed so far were fixed value capacitors; there are also variable capacitors that allow
us to vary the capacitance. This is achieved in two ways, in one method, there is a set of fixed (stator)
plates and some movable (rotor) plates in between those stator plates, the movable plates can be
brought into and taken out of the mesh by means of a shaft thus varying the capacitance, in the next
method one has a mechanism for moving the dielectric thus changing the capacitance. The capacitance
of variable capacitors ranges between 1pF and 500pF.

Procedure:
1. Take a Multimeter that can measure capacitance, set it to measure resistance with the range set
at 2MΩ.
2. Take a few capacitors (polarized and non-polarized). Taking each capacitor one at a time, use
the method described in the theory to check whether the capacitor is faulty or not and write
down your observation in the table.
3. Now set the multimeter to measure capacitance, decode/read the capacitance value and write
it down in Column 3 of the observation table, measure the capacitance with the multimeter and
write down in the observation table as well.

Observations:

Table 4.2: Checking a capacitor

S N.o 1 2 3
Polarized/Non-Polarized Value Implication
Faulty or not faulty
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Table 4.3: Tolerance checking of a capacitor

S N.o 1 2 3 4 5 6
Polarized/Non-Polarized Value Decoded/Read Measured Difference Percent
Capacitance Value Error
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

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Activities

1. The storage of electric charge in a

capacitor is often likened to the
storage of water in a vessel:

Complete this analogy, relating the electrical quantities of charge (Q), voltage (E or V), and
capacitance (C) to the quantities of water height, water volume, and vessel dimensions.

2. Observe the difference between capacitor and battery.

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