catspaw1950 wrote:Moving right along to another question. How do transformers differ from capacitors? Other than the obvious, that the ones on power poles don't turn into talking vehicles.
Cat
How do transformers differ from capacitors? Well, transformers turn from a robot into a vehicle....<g> ..... guess you are not talking about that type either.
Okay, the easiest way to say it is to first mention that both devices are considered "passive components". Let's go back to the description of the capacitor. If a wire were attached to the bottom plate and another wire were attached to the top plate then that would be more akin to a capacitor in that you now know where the wires are attached. However, the cake was indicative of the dielectric and the easiest explanation of that is that a dielectric is essentially an insulator. As I would or will assume is that you know that an insulator does not allow electricity to flow. When you grab ahold of an extension cord that is plugged in you don't get zapped. So, with this in mind in that the dielectric is an insulator then you should be able to see that if I put a battery to the two wires ( positive to one and negative to the other, which one doesn't matter) that no current will flow for there is no conductor between the two wires for there is an insulator between them. We can say that a capacitor is a "Voltage component".
Now an inductor(coil) (a transformer is two inductors(coils) that are in close proximity to each other that uses the characteristic of "mutual coupling" to function so we will only talk about one half of a transformer which is a single inductor (coil)) is nothing more than a piece of wire that is wrapped in a coil. If you were to take a piece of wire and wrap it around a pencil than you would have an inductor(coil). An inductor(coil) does nothing unless there are electrons flowing through it which means that if you were to hook up the very same battery in the paragraph above then a current (electricity) would flow through the wire. An inductor(coil) can become a complicated component to describe (easier if you can play with a piece of wire and a 6 volt Eveready lantern battery) but if you had General Science in school than I will presume that you did the above and made an Electromagnet. So, when the battery was hooked up to the coil that was made around the pencil then electricity would flow through the wire and a magnetic field was created around the wire. (you may have done this in science class but an iron rod was used instead of a pencil and they may have had you pick up nails, staples etc and when the battery was disconnected, the pieces fell). Therefore, if electricity has to flow in order for an inductor(coil) to do it's thing then that flow is called current. We can now say that an inductor(coil) is a "Current component".
Voltage and Current are two distinct characteristics of electricity. Pressure is what pushes water through pipes and would be analogous to Voltage. How much water comes through the pipes would be the flow and is analogous to Current. So, if the well pump quits working you know that there is no pressure to push the water through the pipes but just undo a pipe in the house and water comes out but there is no pressure to push it out of your faucet. Well, there are electrons in a wire and without Voltage then there is no Electrical Pressure to push them (might be a poor example but it does apply)
Hope this helped.
Mikado
