NAME : S.

Mabika
Stud No# 201328759
MODULE CODE: SPHY22
EXPERIMENT 4
DATE: 29 SEPTEMBER 2015
TITLE
Determination of the leak resistance of a paper capacitor
AIM:
To determine a resistance of resistance of the capacitor
APPARATUS
Capacitor
Circuit
Multimeter
Power Supply
THEORY

A capacitor is created out of two metal plates and an insulating material

called a dielectric. The metal plates are placed very close to each other, in
parallel, but the dielectric sits between them to make sure they dont touch.
The dielectric can be made out of all sorts of insulating materials: paper,
glass, rubber, ceramic, plastic, or anything that will impede the flow of
current.The plates are made of a conductive material: aluminum, tantalum,
silver, or other metals. Theyre each connected to a terminal wire, which is
what eventually connects to the rest of the circuit. The capacitance of a
capacitor how many farads it has depends on how its constructed. More
capacitance requires a larger capacitor. Plates with more overlapping surface
area provide more capacitance, while more distance between the plates
means less capacitance. The material of the dielectric even has an effect on
how many farads a cap has. The total capacitance of a capacitor can be

A
calculated with the equation C= d

[1] Capacitors are very important in all areas of

electronics. From timing circuits to sample and hold applications, we depend on capacitors to act
in a nearly ideal fashion. In many cases, however, complex electrochemical interactions cause
capacitors to fall short of perfect. One of the less ideal properties that a capacitor has is leakage
e, or insulation resistance (IR). For a given dielectric material, the effective parallel resistance is
inversely proportional to the capacitance. This is because the resistance is proportional to the
thickness of the dielectric, and inverse to the capacitive area. The capacitance is proportional to
the area and inverse to the separation. Thus, a common unit for qualification of capacitor leakage
is the product of its capacitance and leakage resistance, usually in mega ohm-microfarads
(MF)[2]
PROCEDUCER
The experiment was performed using a circuit , multimeter dc power supply
and capacitor. The circuit had the switch and capacitor. The switch had 3
holes ,wires were placed in these holes. One was for multimer , the other two
wires were from power supply to the circuit to complete the connection of
the circuit. 10 voltage of dc power supply was used to recharge the capacitor
for an approximation of 2 minutes, afterward the power supply was turned
off. the capacitor started to discharged , all these changes were observed on
multimeter reading. The result of voltage varies were recorded down after 5
seconds .
RESULT
TABLE OF RESULT
TIME (S)
0
5
10
15
20

VOLTAGE (V)
3,62
2,84
2,33
1,95
1,81

25
30
35
40
45
50

1,69
1,57
1,48
1,40
1,32
1,26

graph of result
conclusion
When the time in second increases, it the charge capacitor also increases. The graph I have
obtained is the straight line. When the capacitor was disconnected, the values were still
increasing; same applied when it was charging. The initial time in second and in minutes was
equal, since we know that one minute is made of 60 seconds, thus every conversion of time in
seconds to minutes we multiply by 60 seconds then it change to minutes.

REFERENCES
1. https://cdn.sparkfun.com/assets/e/9/e/c/7/51c0975bce395f0775000000
.png
2. [2] www.physics.arizona.edu\physics\htm.com (3 may)