User:MikeBertrand6/ENES-100/Project 3

Week1 Narrative
During the first week I looked into the basics of capacitors and their structure. I took a look at a few different forms and found that some capacitors are just two flat plates with some sort of insulator in the middle, and other capacitors are two plates that are insulated on both sides and rolled up into a cylinder. I also looked at the "Leyden Jar" capacitor and found that it is very similar to the capacitors that are rolled into cylinders. Through a little research, I found that the equation to calculate capacitance (strength) of a cap citor is: C = (E0)(Er)(A/d) where E0 is the electric constant, Er is the dielectric constant, A is the area of the plates, and d is the distance between the plates. With this equation, I realized that there are three things that can be done in order to increase capacitance: With all of this information at my hands, I think I can build a basic parallel plate capacitor during the second week.
 * 1) Make the plates bigger (increase A)
 * 2) Move the plates closer together (decrease d)
 * 3) Use a better dielectric (increase Er)

CDIO Page
Check out the associated CDIO page right here.