Title: Capacitors in Series and ParallelSubtitle: Lab 21Lab Partners: Amber TelscherDate: December 22, 2015Abstract:This lab report consists of experimenting with different sized capacitors and seeing the results that they have in a practical lab setting. Knowing that capacitors store charge temporarily, we willexamine and see if there is a connection between the size of the capacitor and the length of time that the capacitor will hold a charge even after the energy source has stopped. In particular, this lab took a 100 µF capacitor and a 470 µF capacitor and put them in different combinations on a circuit board, such as, each capacitor by themselves to light an LED, and putting these two capacitors in parallel and then in series. Overall, the big picture states that the larger the capacitor there is, the longer it will hold a charge. Therefore, it will continue to give power to a circuit longer even after the system is shut off. In contrast, it is known that the smaller capacitor you have the less charge it will hold and not continue to provide electricity to power an LED as long as a capacitor would if it was larger. One way to make a capacitor smaller would be to put two capacitors in line with each other, which is known as series. In series, you would take the inverse of the capacitor values and add them together; leaving you with a much smaller capacitor than if you had put the capacitors in parallel with one another. If you put two or more capacitors in a parallel circuit, you would be creating a larger capacitor than each one on its own.Introduction and Background:This lab explored the depth behind how capacitors work and the effects that are had when they are arranged in different ways. For example, we will compare and contrast the difference and similarities between series and parallel circuits. The purpose of this lab is to understand that capacitors can store a particular amount of charge when a certain amount of voltage is applied to a capacitor on a circuit board. There are many uses for capacitors, such as the light that gives a flash in your camera when you take a picture. This is just one example of how a capacitor can temporarily store an electric charge to act as a temporary battery to give electric power to a source. Based on my previous knowledge, I hypothesize that parallel circuits will have a larger capacitor yielding a larger capacitance which results in the charge being stored for a longer amount of time in comparison to series circuits which will be the summation of the inverse of the capacitors. In addition to parallel circuits, I found that “the key point for capacitors in parallel is that the voltage on each capacitor is the same”, according to http://faculty.mint.ua.edu. Based on this knowledge, we will try to demonstrate how the capacitance is affected by the capacitor combination between a 100 microFarad capacitor and a 470 microFarad capacitor. Capacitors are two conducting plates that are separated by an insulating material. The batteries from the battery holder in this experiment are responsible for separating the negative and positive charges on the plates. In turn, the separation of charge creates a voltage across the capacitor which lasts even after the switch to the battery holder is turned off. Fundamentally, this is how we use capacitors as a “temporary battery”.Method:For the first part of this two part lab, the capacitance lab kit was together, such as, a circuit board, a 470 microFarad capacitor, one LED, one kΩ resistor, an on/off switch, a 4-snap conductor, two3-snap conductors, three 2-snap conductors, one 1-snap conductor, and a battery holder with two AA batteries inside it. Once all of these pieces were assembled as directed in the procedure circuitset up, the lab went fairly quickly. It consisted of turning the on/off switch to on for two seconds and then turning it off to measure how long it took for the light to fade off completely even after the switch was cut to off. For this to be done with the most precision, the stop watch was started when the On/Off swith was turned to on and waited to turn it back to off when the stop watch hit the two second mark. All of the times for this procedure that was completed ten times over in total for each capacitance lab part were recorded. Due to starting the stop watch when the switch was turned to on, 2 seconds for each trial was subtracted from each second total. After each of thefour capacitances sections were completed, the average of all of the trial times was taken by dividing by ten. That was the general procedure that was followed for this lab, however, each of the four capacitances were mildly different from eachother. To explain, capacitance one was responsible for finding the average of time the LED lasted after the switch was turned to off whenusing a 470 microFarad capacitor. For the second capacitance, it involved attaching a 100 microFarad capacitor in series with the already present 470 microFarad capacitor to see the results of the time average of how long it would hold the charge in the capacitor to act as a temporary battery. For the third capacitance part, the circuit board was reaaranged to fit the procedure description of the set up, which included a 100 microFarad capacitor alon with the rest of the set up. Lastly, the capacitance 4 entailed adding both the 100 microFarad capacitor and the 470 microFarad capacitors in parallel and ended up seeing that when these capacitors were added together in parallel, they held a charge longer than the other capactors in different combinations. In addition to the differences(variables), there was a similarity(control), which was the battery source never changed. Meaning that throughout the experiment, there was consistently the same energy source of two AA batteries.Results:The major findings in this lab include the averages obtained from the four different capacitances given the capacitor combination used for each. Knowing how the 100 microFarad and 470 microFarad capacitors are used in each section and comparing that information to the results of the average amount of time the LED stayed lit even after the switch was turned off will allow for us to conclude whether or not the hypothesis should be accepted or rejected in regards to how the capaccitors are set up in particular combinations will hold charges longer than others or not. Average from column 1 to column 4 is 1.783 seconds, 0.907 seconds, 0.841 seconds,