Helping students understand real capacitors: Measuring efficiencies in a school laboratory

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2008

Authors

Carvalho, PS (Author) FCUP; Sampaio e Sousa, A (Author) Other

Journal

Title: Physics Education

Vol. 43

Pages: 400-406

ISSN: 0031-9120

Publisher: Institute of Physics Publishing

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge

Scopus - 4 Citations

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-007-MP4

DOI: 10.1088/0031-9120/43/4/008

Abstract (EN): A recent reform in the Portuguese secondary school curriculum reintroduced the study of capacitors. Thus we decided to implement some experimental activities on this subject with our undergraduate students in physics education courses. A recent announcement of a new kind of capacitor being developed by a team of scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which makes use of nanotechnologies, was a great motivation for the study of a topic that could easily be considered 'out of time'. Since this new kind of capacitor is being seen as the battery of the future, our focus was essentially on efficiency measurements, motivating students to obtain, respectively, the time constant and the energies stored and supplied during the charge and discharge processes, from experimental graphics representing the power as a function of time in real capacitors. © 2008 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific