Resistor--capacitor (RC) circuit labs help students, but most courses don't include them because of complications and cost. This work presents an easy and inexpensive Arduino-based lab on the charge and energy transfer between two capacitors with different values of the initial electric charge when they are connected through a resistor. Capacitors…

Experiments involving RC circuits are an integral part of introductory physics courses. Previous articles using RC circuits describe determining the charge on a Van de Graaff generator, measuring currents and voltages in a charging RC circuit using a multimeter or an Arduino, measuring the decay constants of complex RC circuits, and using the…

Motivated by often passingly brief textbook discussions of industrial capacitors, this study examines how students make sense of textbook descriptions to create an industrial rolled-up capacitor. A total of 37 junior-year students at a top high school in Beijing, China, participated in the study. The participants followed their textbook guidance…

Purpose: The aim of this study is to investigate the knowledge of prospective physics teachers on capacitors and electric field lines. Sample: The study group consists of 45 prospective physics teachers, 31 of whom are female, 14 of whom are male, studying at a state University in Turkey. Design and methods: A descriptive model was selected as the…

The experiment in charging and discharging of a capacitor through a resistor is fundamentally important for studying electronics. We have developed an alternative procedure to measure the voltage drops across capacitors as a function of time. The simple apparatus controlled by an Arduino Uno microcontroller board and LabVIEW™ interface was set up.…

In this study, we develop a capacitive rotating angle sensing system using a hand-made 1 kHz oscillator, field-effect transistor (FET) amplifier, and tester through a physics experiment conducted in Ryukoku University. Physics majors of the university can study the fundamentals of electronics through this system because it uses electronic…

In this article, we examine the rotation angle dependence of a hand-made fan-type variable capacitor for use in physics experiments in university classes. We made two circular bakelite plates, and the two terminal plates of the capacitor were 90° fan-type copper disks. The capacitance varied linearly with the rotation angle. The standard deviation…

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of simulation-supported inquiry-based learning on pre-service teachers' conceptual understanding of capacitors. The participants consisted of 50 pre-service teachers studying at a state university in Turkey. The participants were divided into two groups of 25 each on the basis of their…

In this work, an alternative Experimental Didactic Kit for teaching resistors, capacitors and "RC" timing circuits was developed, using the Arduino platform technology, which is composed of a microcontroller and peripherals, due to the easy access to available teaching materials, enabling the reproduction of the prototype in the future…

RC circuits are ubiquitous. They are the most common entities in modern electronics; introductory physics courses typically include a chapter and a lab on RC circuits. Several papers dealing with many aspects of RC circuits have been published in "The Physics Teacher" and other educational journals. An RC circuit contains a series…

It is proposed a network approach for electric circuits simplification, that through a unified systematic procedure allows simplifying circuits of any complexity, and evaluation of the equivalent resistances, capacitors and inductors. Circuits to be simplified are characterized by their nodes, and by the elements of different types (resistances,…

Resistor-capacitor (RC) circuits are a popular topic for both theoretical discussion and experimental investigation in introductory physics. This article presents a novel approach to studying such circuits using a piezoelectric buzzer. A capacitor is discharged through a resistor and the buzzer, and the intensity of the sound produced by the…

Ampère's law is presented in introductory physics as a relation between the line integral of the magnetic field around a closed loop and the net current crossing any open surface spanning that loop. By allowing the surface to pass between the plates of a charging parallel-plate capacitor, Maxwell realized that this law is incomplete and introduced…

Lock-in amplifiers (LIAs) are commonly used in chemistry laboratories to improve noise-to-signal ratios. Constructing and testing a suitably designed LIA provide undergraduate students with an excellent opportunity to learn about theory, construction, and applications of LIA. In particular, students can learn about time-dependent behavior and…

We have designed an Arduino-based experiment to check the linear relationship between charge and voltage drop in a capacitor. The electric charge stored in a capacitor is determined by the numerical integration over time of the electric current during the charging or discharging processes through a resistor. Instead of using scientific software to…