Government Property Senior High

NOT FOR SALE School

NOT

General Physics 2
Quarter 3 – Module 3
Capacitance and Capacitors

Department of Education ● Republic of the Philippines

General Physics 2- Grade 12
Alternative Delivery Mode
Quarter 3 - Module 3: Capacitance and Capacitors
First Edition, 2020

Republic Act 8293, section 176 states that: No copyright shall subsist in any
work of the Government of the Philippines. However, prior approval of the
government agency or office wherein the work is created shall be necessary for
exploitation of such work for profit. Such agency or office may, among other things,
impose as a condition the payment of royalty.

Borrowed materials (i.e., songs, stories, poems, pictures, photos, brand

names, trademarks, etc.) included in this book are owned by their respective
copyright holders. Every effort has been exerted to locate and seek permission to
use these materials from their respective copyright owners. The publisher and
authors do not represent nor claim ownership over them.

Published by the Department of Education – Division of Cagayan de Oro

Schools Division Superintendent: Dr. Cherry Mae L. Limbaco, CESO V

Development Team of the Module

Author: Ariel V. Fabrigas, SPST-I

Content Evaluator: Glenmark A. Dal, MT-I

Layout and Design: Arian M. Edullantes

Language Evaluator: Pinky Babiera Dela Calzada

Management Team
Chairperson: Cherry Mae L. Limbaco, Ph.D., CESO V
Schools Division Superintendent

Co-Chairperson: Rowena H. Para-on, Ph.D.

Asst. Schools Division Superintendent

Members Lorebina C. Carrasco, OIC-CID Chief

Jean S. Macasero, EPS - Science
Joel D. Potane, LRMS Manager
Lanie O. Signo, Librarian II
Gemma Pajayon, PDO II

Printed in the Philippines by

Department of Education – Division of Cagayan de Oro City
Office Address: Fr. William F. Masterson Ave Upper Balulang Cagayan de Oro
Telefax: (08822)855-0048
E-mail Address: cagayandeoro.city@deped.gov.ph
 Senior
Senior High
High School
School

General Physics 2
Quarter 3 - Module 3
Capacitance and Capacitors

This instructional material was collaboratively developed and reviewed

by educators from public schools. We encourage teachers and other
education stakeholders to email their feedback, comments, and
recommendations to the Department of Education at action@deped.gov.ph

We value your feedback and recommendations.

Department of Education ● Republic of the Philippines

FAIR USE AND CONTENT DISCLAIMER: This SLM (Self Learning Module) is
for educational purposes only. Borrowed materials (i.e. songs, stories, poems,
pictures, photos, brand names, trademarks, etc.) included in these modules are
owned by their respective copyright holders. The publisher and authors do not
represent nor claim ownership over them.
 Table of Contents

What This Module is About………………………………………………………………………..i

What I Need to Know………………………………………………………………………………i

How to Learn from this Module…………………………………………………………………...ii

Icons of this Module………………………………………………………………………………..ii

What I Know………………………………………………………………………………………..iii

Lesson 1: Capacitance and Capacitors

What I Need to Know...…………………………………………………………...1

What Is It…………………………….……………………………………………..1

What I Have Learned…………………………………………………………….3

What I Can Do…………………………………………………………………….3

Lesson 2: Capacitors in Series and Parallel

What’s In………………………………………………………………………… 4

What I Need to Know……………………………………………………………..4

What’s More……………………………………………………………………….5

What I Have Learned…………………..………………………………………...5

Lesson 3: Energy Stored and Electric Field Energy

in Capacitor
What’s In………………………………………………………………………… 6

What I Need to Know…………………………………………………………….6

What I Have Learned…………………………………………………………… 7

What’s More …………………………………………………………………….. 8

Summary………………………………………………………………………………………….. 8
Assessment: (Post-Test) ……………………………………………...…………………………9
Key to Answers…………………………………………………………………………………… 11
References……………………………………………………………………………………… ..12
 Module 3
Capacitance and Capacitors
What This Module is About
This module showcases your knowledge in Capacitors and Capacitance and critical
problem-solving skills in analyzing capacitors in different network configuration. It also
tackles the fundamental principles of Dielectrics and Capacitor’s Electric Field Energy.

This module has three (3) lessons:

 Lesson 1: Capacitance and Capacitors
 Lesson 2: Capacitors in Series and Parallel
 Lesson 3: Energy Stored and Electric Field Energy in Capacitors

What I Need to Know

After going through this module, you are expected to:

1. Deduce the effects of simple capacitors (e.g., parallel-plate, spherical, cylindrical) on

the capacitance, charge, and potential difference when the size, potential difference,
or charge is changed (STEM_GP12EM-IIId-23)
2. Calculate the equivalent capacitance of a network of capacitors connected in
series/parallel (STEM_GP12EM-IIId-24)
3. Determine the total charge, the charge on, and the potential difference across each
capacitor in the network given the capacitors connected in series/parallel
(STEM_GP12EM-IIId-25)
4. Determine the potential energy stored inside the capacitor given the geometry and
the potential difference across the capacitor (STEM_GP12EM-IIId-26)
5. Describe the effects of inserting dielectric materials on the capacitance, charge, and
electric field of a capacitor (STEM_GP12EM-IIId-29)
6. Solve problems involving capacitors and dielectrics in contexts such as, but not
limited to, charged plates, batteries, and camera flashlamps. (STEM_GP12EM-IIId-
30)
_

i
 How to Learn from this Module
To achieve the objectives cited above, you are to do the following:
• Take your time reading the lessons carefully.
• Follow the directions and/or instructions in the activities and exercises diligently.
• Answer all the given tests and exercises.

Icons of this Module

What I Need to This part contains learning objectives that
Know are set for you to learn as you go along the
module.

What I know This is an assessment as to your level of

knowledge to the subject matter at hand,
meant specifically to gauge prior related
knowledge
What’s In This part connects previous lessons with that
of the current one.

What’s New An introduction of the new lesson through

various activities, before it will be presented
to you

What is It These are discussions of the activities as a

way to deepen your discovery and under-
standing of the concept.

What’s More These are follow-up activities that are in-

tended for you to practice further in order to
master the competencies.

What I Have Activities designed to process what you

Learned have learned from the lesson

What I can do These are tasks that are designed to show-

case your skills and knowledge gained, and
applied into real-life concerns and situations.

What I Know
ii
PRE-TEST : MULTIPLE CHOICE.
Directions: Read and understand each item and choose the letter of the best answer. Write
your answers on the space provide before the number.

___ 1. It is the unit of capacitance.

A) Coulomb B) Volts C) Farad D) Ampere

___ 2. Which of the following refers to the function of a capacitor?

A) It dissipates voltage across the circuit.
B) It absorbs and stores electrical charge.
C) It acts as the main source of electric potential.
D) It allows DC signals to pass through.

___ 3. Capacitor stores which type of energy?

A) kinetic energy B) vibrational energy
C) potential energy D) heat energy

___ 4. Why does capacitor block dc signal at steady state?

A) Due to high frequency of dc signal.
B) Due to zero frequency of dc signal.
C) Capacitor does not pass any current at steady state.
D) Due to zero frequency of dc signal.

___ 5. If a parallel plate capacitor of plate area 2 m 2 and plate separation of 1 m

stores the charge of 1.77 x 10-11 C, what is the voltage across the capacitor?
A) 1V B) 2V C) 3V D) 4V

___ 6. Which of the following is a passive device?

A) Transistor B) Rectifier C) Capacitor D) Vacuum Tubes

___ 7. What is the value of capacitance of a capacitor which has a voltage of 4V and
has 16C of charge?
A) 2F B) 4F C) 6F D) 8F

___ 8. Of which medium is capacitance high?

A) Air B) Mica C) Water D) Metal

___ 9. What is the voltage of a battery connected to a parallel plate capacitor with
a plate area of 2.0 cm2 and a plate separation of 2 mm if the charge stored on
the plates is 4.0 pC?
A) 4.4V B) 4 V C) 4.2V D) 4.5V

___ 10. A typical capacitor in a memory cell have a capacitance of 3 x 10 -14 F. If the
voltage across the capacitor is 0.5 V, what is the number of electrons that
must move to the capacitor to charge it?
A) 93750 B) 94500 C) 92350 D) 96430

iii
 Lesson Capacitance and Capacitors
1
What I Need to Know

Look at your appliances at home. Can you imagine the complex circuitry that
lies behind your common household appliances? Do you know the underlying
components that enables it to operate at ease? These devices and appliances
lessen our workloads in our daily life.

In this lesson, you will learn the use and function of capacitor and define
capacitance.

(a)
Look at picture (a) shown above. What do you think is the use of batteries in our
devices? How important is energy storage in devices and modern electronics?

What Is It
Every complex and modern gadget made today consists of different
electronic components. One of those is known as a capacitor. A Capacitor is a
component which has the ability or “capacity” to store energy in the form of an
electrical charge producing a potential difference (Static Voltage) across its plates,
much like a small rechargeable battery.
There are many different kinds of capacitors which are available from very
small capacitor beads used in resonance circuits to large power factor correction
capacitors, but they all do the same thing, they store charge.

1
 (a) Capacitors in different forms

In its basic form, a capacitor consists of two or more parallel conductive

(metal) plates which are not connected or touching each other but are electrically
separated either by air or by some form of a good insulating material such as waxed
paper, mica, ceramic, plastic, or some form of a liquid gel as used in electrolytic
capacitors. The insulating layer between a capacitors plates is commonly called the
Dielectric.
Due to this insulating layer, DC current cannot flow through the capacitor as it
blocks it allowing instead a voltage to be present across the plates in the form of an
electrical charge.
Capacitance is the ability of an object (in this case a circuit element) to store
an electric charge Q. The circuit element that has this property is called a capacitor.
When a capacitor is connected in series to a power supply (in this case, a DC power
supply of potential V), charges – Q and + Q are stored in the plates of the capacitor
when they are connected to the negative and positive terminals of the DC-power
supply, respectively. The potential across the plates of this capacitor is then equal to
the potential V of the power supply. Capacitance C is defined as the ratio of the
charge Q = |±Q| stored in each plate to the potential V between the plates.
Mathematically, capacitance can be defined by

Q A
C= =ε 0
V d
Where,
C, is the value of capacitance ε 0 , the permittivity of free
Farad unit space 8.854 x10-12

Q, the value of charge stored A, surface area of plates

in meters squared (m2)
in coulomb

V, voltage across capacitors in d, distance between the

volts plates in meters

2
 What I Have Learned
Direction: Answer the following questions as directed. For the
calculations, show your solution and encircle the final answer.

1. What is a capacitor?

2. Why do capacitors block DC currents?

3. What is the unit of capacitance?

4. What is the relationship among C, Q, and V?

What I Can Do

Performance Task:

List down all the devices you own with capacitors in it.
Note:
 Only the items found in your home should be listed.
 You may enhance your work using different materials.
 It is handwritten in an A4 bond paper.

Enrichment Activity:

Watch a video through YouTube link below entitled

“The basics how capacitors work working principle”,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4EUwTwZ110

3
4
 Capacitors in Series and
Lesson Parallel Connection
2
What’s In
In the previous lesson, you have learned about the definition of
capacitance and the functions of capacitors. You also learned about the basic
operations of capacitor in DC set-up and its mathematical definition.

In this lesson, you are going to analyze and calculate capacitance in different
capacitor circuit configurations such as series and parallel connection.

What I Need to Know

Capacitors can be installed in a circuit in two different configurations.

1. Series Connection
Electric charge Q is a conserved physical quantity. This means that the total
charge in a circuit stays the same. As a charge Q, therefore, passes through a
SERIES (or a one-path system) connection of capacitors, each capacitor gets the
1 1 1 1
same total charge Q such that Q1 = Q , Q2 = Q and = + + …+ .
Ct C 1 C 2 Cn

Capacitors in Series

2. Parallel Connection
When Q passes through a PARALLEL (or a multi-path system) connection of
capacitors, Q splits up according to the number of paths present. In this case, Q =
Q1 + Q2 and Ct =C 1+C 2+C 3+ …+Cn

Capacitors in parallel
5
 What’s More

Derive and Analyze.

Direction. Follow the instruction and derive the formula given.

1. Using the definition C = Q/V, show that for a SERIES connection of

capacitors: 1/C = 1/C1 + 1/C2. What does this equation mean? What happens
to C as more and more capacitors are connected in series?

2. Using the definition C = Q/V, show that for a PARALLEL connection of

capacitors: C = C1 + C2. What does this equation mean? What happens to C
as more and more capacitors are connected in parallel?

What I Have Learned

Direction: Calculate the values asked in the following questions with the given
circuit diagram.

1. Determine the values of the following variables in Circuit A.

a. V1
b. V2
c. V3
d. Q1
e. Q2
f. Q3
g. Total Capacitance, CT
h. Total Charge, QT
Circuit A

2. Determine the charge in each capacitor and

the voltage across each capacitor in Circuit B.
Given:
V3 = 5V

Circuit B

Enrichment Activity:

Watch a video through YouTube link below entitled “How To Solve Any Circuit
Problem With Capacitors In Series and Parallel Combinations - Physics”,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-gPuw6JsxQ

6
 Energy Stored and Electric
Lesson Field Energy in Capacitors
3
What’s In

In the previous lesson, you learned to analyze and calculate the values of
capacitance, charge, and voltages across the nodes in series and parallel
connection.

In this lesson, we will examine the energy stored in a capacitor as

electrostatic potential energy and its relationship to the charge and voltage.

What I Need to Know

In a charged parallel-plate capacitor, the stored charges ±Q in the plates give

rise an electric field E between the plates. This is illustrated in the figure below:

Electric field in a charged parallel-plate capacitor

To gain insight into how this energy may be expressed (in terms of Q and V),
consider a charged, empty, parallel-plate capacitor; that is, a capacitor without a
dielectric but with a vacuum between its plates. The space between its plates has a
volume Ad, and it is filled with a uniform electrostatic field E. The total energy UC of
the capacitor is contained within this space. The energy density UE in this space is
simply UC divided by the volume Ad. If we know the energy density, the energy can
be found as UC = UE (Ad). We will learn in Electromagnetic Waves (after completing
the study of Maxwell’s equations) that the energy density UE in a region of free space
occupied by an electrical field E depends only on the magnitude of the field and is:

7
Multiplying the energy density by the volume between the plates, we obtain
the amount of energy stored between the plates of a parallel-plate capacitor

In this derivation, we used the fact that the electrical field between the
V A Q
plates is uniform so that  E= d and C=ϵ 0 d .Because C= V we can express
this result in other equivalent forms:

What Have I Learned

Direction. Explain the following.

1. What is the relationship between the electric field E and the electric potential
V between the plates of the capacitor? Explain.

2. Where is the energy stored in a parallel-plate capacitor? Explain.

3. Let the energy stored “in the capacitor” be U. Show that U is given by the
1
expression: U = Q2/C
2

dU dQ
[Hint: The power P in the capacitor is given by P = = IV where I = . This
dt dt
is a simple exercise on integration.]

4. Calculate the energy stored in the capacitor network in the figure below
when the capacitors are fully charged and when the capacitances are
C1=12.0μF,C2=2.0μF , and C3=4.0μF , respectively.

8
 What’s More

Dielectric is an insulating material or a very poor conductor of electric current.

When dielectrics are placed in an electric field, practically no current flows in them
because, unlike metals, they have no loosely bound, or free, electrons that may drift
through the material. Instead, electric polarization occurs. The positive charges
within the dielectric are displaced minutely in the direction of the electric field, and
the negative charges are displaced minutely in the direction opposite to the electric
field. This slight separation of charge, or polarization, reduces the electric field within
the dielectric.

Dielectric in a parallel-plate capacitor

Summary
Capacitors play an important role in modern electronics. Its significance can
be observed with current development of technology. The mechanism of capacitor to
charge and discharge electrical energy enables modern devices to function
accordingly.
We learned from this lesson the relationship of capacitance to charge and
voltage. Moreover, we were able to analyze the different behaviors of parameters in
series and parallel connections.

9
 Assessment: (Post-Test)

MULTIPLE CHOICE.
Directions: Read and understand each item and choose the letter of the best answer. Write
your answers on the space provide before the number.

___ 1. Capacitor stores which type of energy?

A) kinetic energy B) vibrational energy
C) potential energy D) heat energy

___ 2. Why does capacitor block dc signal at steady state?

A) due to high frequency of dc signal
B) due to zero frequency of dc signal
C) capacitor does not pass any current at steady state
D) due to zero frequency of dc signal

___ 3. What is the value of capacitance of a capacitor which has a voltage of 4V and
has 16 C of charge?
A) 2F B) 4F C) 6F D) 8F

___ 4. Which of the following is a passive device?

A) Transistor B) Rectifier C) Capacitor D) Vacuum Tubes

___ 5. Evaluate the circuit shown at the right.

What is the charge of capacitor C3?

A) 30uC
B) 40uC
C) 50uC
D) 60uC

___ 6. Refer to the diagram in item number 5. What is the voltage across C 4?
A) 5V B) 10V C) 15V D) 20V

___ 7. Evaluate the circuit shown below. What is the voltage across C 1?

A) 5V
B) 10V
C) 15V
D) 20V

10
___ 8. Refer to the diagram in item number 7. What is the charge of C 4?
A) 60uC B) 80uC C) 50uC D) 70uC

___ 9. A potential difference of 100 mV exists between the outer and inner surfaces
of a cell membrane. The inner surface is negative relative to the outer. How
much work is required to move a sodium ion Na + outside the cell from the
interior?
(Express your answer in electron volts. A singly-charged ion has a charge of
A eV, 1 eV = 1.6 × 10−19 J.)
A) 0.1 eV B) 0.2eV C) -0.1eV D) -0.2eV

___ 10. A parallel-plate capacitor has 4.00 cm2 plates separated by 6.00 mm of air. If
a 12.0V battery is connected to this capacitor, how much energy does it store in
Joules?
A) 4.25 × 10-11 J B) 4 × 10-11 J
C) 4.5 × 10-11 J D) 3.9 × 10-11 J

11
12
 References

Canva. Accessed December 24, 2020. https://www.canva.com/education

Commission on Higher Education. 2016.General Physics 2 : Teaching Guide for
Senior High School.

n.d. Accessed July 6, 2020.

https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/capacitor/cap_1.html
n.d. Accessed July 6,2020.
https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/University_Physics/Book
%3A_University_Physics_(OpenStax)/Map
%3A_University_Physics_II__Thermodynamics_Electricity_and_Magnetism_(
OpenStax)/08%3A_Capacitance/
8.04%3A_Energy_Stored_in_a_Capacitor#:~:text=The%20energy%20UC
%20stored,the%20electrical%20field%20builds%20up.
n.d. Britannica. Accessed July 7, 2020.
https://www.britannica.com/science/dielectric
n.d. Accessed July 7, 2020.
https://www.circuitlab.com/editor/#?id=7pq5wm&from=homepage

For inquiries and feedback, please write or call:

Department of Education – Bureau of Learning Resources (DepEd-BLR)

DepEd Division of Cagayan de Oro City

Fr. William F. Masterson Ave Upper Balulang Cagayan de Oro
Telefax: ((08822)855-0048
E-mail Address: cagayandeoro.city@deped.gov.ph

FAIR USE AND CONTENT DISCLAIMER: This SLM (Self Learning Module) is
for educational purposes only. Borrowed materials (i.e. songs, stories, poems,
pictures, photos, brand names, trademarks, etc.) included in these modules are
owned by their respective copyright holders. The publisher and authors do not
represent nor claim ownership over them.
13