Re: Big Capacitor?

["J. B. Weazle McCreath" <weazle-at-hurontel.on.ca> (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)]

At 12:15 PM 08/10/00 -0600, you wrote:

>I have a question or two for any one out there.  How big would a capacitor
>have to be, (physical dimensions), to have a value of 1 Farad? I know that
>voltage rating would be a determining factor, but just a ballpark figure.
>Has anybody ever seen one? 
>Just curious.
> 
>Coil on,
>
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>Ronn	
>Dukester-at-home-dot-com
>

Hi Ronn,

We had a one farad, 25 volt, cap at the college I went to back in the 70's.
If my memory serves me right, it was about the size of a five gallon pail.
We would hook the current regulated bench suuply to it and charge it up to
nine volts, which took quite some time.  Then we'd hook a small transistor
radio to the cap and it would run it for several hours.

We also used to charge it up to a higher voltage and then drop pieces of
bare 14 gauge wire across the terminals.  The wire would just vapourise
in a millisecond with a blinding flash and loud bang!  The only other
thing I remember about it was that it was very heavy...we used a hand
dolly to move it around the lab.


73, Weazle, VE3EAR/VE3WZL

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