Cat wrote:I've been reading about capacitors in an effort to gain some understanding of how they function. Now I have a question. An asymetrical capacitor is mentioned in the work with electrogravitics. Is the capacitor physically narrower at one end? I'm picturing something like a four lane highway narrowing down to two lanes, then everything breaking loose as the highway widens again. Not the most accurate analogy in the world, I suppose, but it's what I can visualize at this point.
Cat
Hello Cat,
You asked a very good question and I will attempt to answer it as simply as possible.
I will choose a cooking metaphor since you have talked about baking and cooking a good deal.
If you were to bake a single layer cake, vanilla or chocolate or whatever, and put it on a cooling rack, we will assign this the description of "dielectric".
Now, take two dinner plates and set one on the table. Then put the cake on the plate. Finally, put the other dinner plate on top of the cake. When viewed from the side, you would see the plate on the bottom, the cake (dielectric) and then the plate on top. This would be representative of a capacitor. This capacitor would be described as being "symmetrical" since both plates are the same size.
Now, remove the top plate from the cake (dielectric) and replace it with a coffee cup saucer. You now have a large plate on the bottom and a smaller plate on the top which means that the cake (dielectric) is between two dissimilar size plates and it would be considered "asymmetric".
So, a "symmetrical capacitor" has plates that are equal in size and an "asymmetrical capacitor" has plates that are not equal in size.
Good start so far?
Mikado