View Single Post
  #7   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 21-12-2006, 09:58
Richard Wallace's Avatar
Richard Wallace Richard Wallace is offline
I live for the details.
FRC #3620 (Average Joes)
Team Role: Engineer
 
Join Date: Jan 2003
Rookie Year: 1996
Location: Southwestern Michigan
Posts: 3,647
Richard Wallace has a reputation beyond reputeRichard Wallace has a reputation beyond reputeRichard Wallace has a reputation beyond reputeRichard Wallace has a reputation beyond reputeRichard Wallace has a reputation beyond reputeRichard Wallace has a reputation beyond reputeRichard Wallace has a reputation beyond reputeRichard Wallace has a reputation beyond reputeRichard Wallace has a reputation beyond reputeRichard Wallace has a reputation beyond reputeRichard Wallace has a reputation beyond repute
Re: What to do with big capacitors?

0.025 Farad x 40 Volt = 1 Coulomb electrical charge.

That's one Ampere flowing for one second, or 10 mA for 100 seconds, assuming a load circuit that will draw a constant current. So yeah, that capacitor can power a small logic circuit, through an appropriately designed regulator, for at least a minute or so.

More realistically, a load circuit equivalent to a constant 2000 Ohm resistance (the path from your left index finger to your right index finger, through your body, under some conditions) would initially draw 20 milliAmperes, and this would decay exponentially with a 50 second time constant [ i(t) = 0.02 x exp(-t/50) where t = time in seconds and i(t) is current in Amperes ] so that after 2.5 minutes the current will be less than 1 mA and the voltage less that 0.5 Volt.

20 mA is not enough current to send your heart into ventricular fibrillation, but enough to get your attention. Look here for more on electric shock.
__________________
Richard Wallace

Mentor since 2011 for FRC 3620 Average Joes (St. Joseph, Michigan)
Mentor 2002-10 for FRC 931 Perpetual Chaos (St. Louis, Missouri)
since 2003

I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.
(Cosmic Religion : With Other Opinions and Aphorisms (1931) by Albert Einstein, p. 97)