steven dufresne, writing for hackaday.com, presented a column for do-it-yourself engineers who need to create their own capacitors. dufresne explained the steps that go into choosing a dielectric, including the calculations for determining the dielectric constant.
(wikimedia commons)
the dielectric constant, also referred to as the relative permittivity, is the measure of how much capacitance, the amount of energy stored on the plates of the capacitor, has increased when an insulating material is added between the capacitor plates (such as paraffin wax).
dufresne wrote, “that means that to get the dielectric constant, simply measure the capacitor’s capacitance with the material in place (cm), and then measure its capacitance again but without the material i.e. with air instead (ca). divide the first value (cm) by the second value (ca) and you’ve got the material’s dielectric constant.”
read the full story at http://hackaday.com/2016/10/12/measuring-the-dielectric-constant-for-diy-capacitors to see the other considerations that dufresne outlines and to see photos of his work to determine the dielectric constant in the project he was working on.
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