If you’ve studied capacitors, you’ll have (very probably) come across the decay equation:
where
is resistance,
is capacitance,
is the charge on the capacitor at time
and
is the initial charge.
Where does this come from?
Firstly from the basics of circuits, we know that (yes, I’m using the british convention with regards the symbol for voltage, I understand elsewhere
is used instead).
Now when we discharge a capacitor through a circuit, the e.m.f.s are supplied by the capacitor.
Now substitutiting for V in the above equation gives
So we now have an equation for the current in the circuit, but wait, where does this current come from? It’s the capacitor discharging – this current is equal to the rate of discharge of the capacitor, so:
So substituting the above expression for I
Ooh look, a differential equation.
Seperate the variables giving:
where k is some constant.
If we define the initial charge to be – the charge when t = 0
so we now can replace giving:
MY WORK HERE IS DONE
:D

4 comments
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Saturday 23rd May, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Cederash
прочитал с большим интересом — очень очень понравилось
Sunday 24th May, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Ferinannnd
Класно! Нашел, наконец толковый блог на просторах интернета) Ура!
Tuesday 26th May, 2009 at 6:47 am
Avertedd
Суперский пост! Блог уже в ридере )
Saturday 24th October, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Andy Davies
Watching mr. Lloyd trying to derive this is hilarious xD