Genius Capacitor

don't understand capacitors?

i have absolutely no idea what a capacitor is for. i know that they store energy but i have a couple questions. 1.why would you have to store energy. 2. is the voltage on a electrolytic capacitor the maximum voltage or does it turn a voltage in to that. 4. if yes could a 400 volt capacitor turn 3 volts into 400 volts. 5. am i an awesome genius. 6.why does a capacitor usually have a resistor in front of it. 7. where and what do you connect to a capacitor besides + and -. 8. how do you read a lytic (or something like that) capacitor (the voltage or farads).

1. Capacitors can store energy (in the form of charge or voltage) that can be released all at once or a litle at a time. As such, they are useful in switching power supplies as temporary charge storage and in many types of filter circuits.

2. The voltage rating of an electrolytic capacitor is usually expressed as WVDC or "Working Voltage Direct Current" and should be considered a maximum. If this maximum voltage is exceeded, the capacitor is usualy ruined and can explode (burst its case).

3. A capcitor cannot change a voltage, it merely stores charge at the voltage it was charged to.

4. See answer to 3.

5. If you were, you would know more about capacitors.

6. A series resistor in front of a shunt capacitor is a low pass filter, one of the most common uses for a capacitor is for filtering.

7. Most capacitors have only 2 conections, and they are marked with polarity information only for electrolytic capacitors. There are so many ways to use a capacitor that it would be difficult to explain al of the possible circuit uses for a capacitor, much less every possible place to put one in a circuit. In general, an electrolytic capacitor should be used and conected so that there is always a net positive charge on the capacitor, thus they are not always the best choice, but they do have the highest energy densities (Farads/m^3).

8. On an electrolytic capacitor, as well as most other types, there is the capacitance value in pF or uF, (asume pF if not marked or if marked with a 3 digit number like 103 = 10,000 pF or 0.01uF). The maximum working voltage as explained before should be considered a maximum and is relatively independent of the capacitance.

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