Thread: Capacitor Question
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Unread 19-02-2007, 08:51
Ronald_raygun Ronald_raygun is offline
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Re: Capacitor Question
Al,

You're definitely right. The capacitor will lose its energy quickly. That's what I want.

The capacitor's job is to dump the energy into the motor in order to give my fuel-cell car 4 times the horsepower to get the car going. It's sort of like having a head start by going faster than the competition. The fuel cell will be responsible for taking the car the rest of the way. It's only 10m. A 10F capacitor has roughly 36 Joules. 36 Joules dumped instantaneously will get a 1kg car going somewhere around 8m/s. Given the discharge characteristics of a capacitor, I don't really expect much more than 5m/s for the first second of the race. That's plenty fast for me.

Before anyone else responds, please take note that I am a high school junior whose role on a FIRST robotics team was nowhere near electrical engineering. I am completely new to this, and will probably ask the questions of a newbie.
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Last edited by Ronald_raygun : 19-02-2007 at 08:52. Reason: grammar