Re: capacitance formula

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <dhmccauley-at-spacecatlighting-dot-com>


Theoretically yes, in reality no.  You can never assume capacitors in series
will share voltage equally among them.
In practice,  you would also use equalizing resistors across each capacitor
to equalize the voltage across the capacitors.

The Captain

 > >I've been wondering what the capacitance between two conductive plates
 > >separated by some distance that is filled with both a sheet of plastic
 > >and some oil, where the plastic and oil have different dialectric
 > >constants, and the thickness of each is different.
 > >I've come to the conclusion that it will be the same as if it were two
 > >capacitors in series, one purely the plastic, the other purely the oil,
 > >each with their own individual thicknesses. Then use the series
capacitance
 > >formula C = 1/ (1/c1 + 1/c2).
 > >Is this correct?
 > >-Pete Lawrence.
 > >
 > >.
 >
 > Pete,
 >
 > Yes.  And the voltage across the individual dielectric systems will share
 > identically as with capacitors connected in series.
 >
 > -- Bert --