Mbira
Well-known member
OK,
I'll get laughed out of the Drawing Board, but here it goes. There has been something really confusing me about caps. When you look at a typical power supply, after a rectifier, there are a few caps to smooth things out. My understanding is that as the cap charges from the ripply "DC" that's coming out of a rectifier, as the crest of the ripple goes down, the charge releases slower and is filled again by the next wave. This is the smoothing effect of the caps and reduces the ripple. Ripple to me is "AC" In this sense to me, caps are changing AC into DC and letting DC pass.
But then the oxymoron to me is that then later in the circuit, caps are used to block DC and let AC pass (decoupling cap, for example). How can a cap change AC into DC in one case, and block DC and let AC pass in another case?
I assume that there must be some fundamental thing I'm not getting (probably something to do with the uF of the cap) so please feel free to rip me a new one and school me with some tough love...
Joel
:guinness:
I'll get laughed out of the Drawing Board, but here it goes. There has been something really confusing me about caps. When you look at a typical power supply, after a rectifier, there are a few caps to smooth things out. My understanding is that as the cap charges from the ripply "DC" that's coming out of a rectifier, as the crest of the ripple goes down, the charge releases slower and is filled again by the next wave. This is the smoothing effect of the caps and reduces the ripple. Ripple to me is "AC" In this sense to me, caps are changing AC into DC and letting DC pass.
But then the oxymoron to me is that then later in the circuit, caps are used to block DC and let AC pass (decoupling cap, for example). How can a cap change AC into DC in one case, and block DC and let AC pass in another case?
I assume that there must be some fundamental thing I'm not getting (probably something to do with the uF of the cap) so please feel free to rip me a new one and school me with some tough love...
Joel
:guinness: