Lab 9 Report Examples

EE 2010L Circuit Analysis Lab Name : TA : Partner: Introduction: In this lab we studied about RC circuits, RL circuits and time constants. We constructed two RC circuits with the given resistors and capacitors connected to the frequency source. And we measured voltage across the resistors and capacitors, using the oscilloscope the time constants of the capacitors are also measured. The time constant of the capacitor is defined as the time taken by the capacitor to get charged through the resistor. Time constant of a capacitor can be calculated using the equation T=RC . In this equation T is the time constant, R is the resistance and C is the capacitance. We calculated a percent difference between calculated time constant and measured time constant for the two RC circuits. The calculated percent difference is so small which indicating that the experimental data is matching with theoretical data.Data Table:Ω
Sample calculations: T=RC T=10KΩ x 0.015µF T=10 x 103Ω x 0.015 x 10-6F T=150µs %Difference=A-BA+B2 x 100%=150-132150+1322x 100% = 12.7 Questions: Increasing the resistance value would have bigger impact on the time constant because the resistance oppose the flow of current in the circuit . The higher the resistance, the longer the capacitor gets charged. This is due to the time constant increases with respect to the resistance value. Due to this even the size of the capacitor is increased that would not have bigger impact on time constant as increasing the resistance value does. Conclusion: There is a small percent difference between the measured and expected time constants. That means there is some error involved in the experiment. This error is mainly because there may be disagreement between the face values of resistance and capacitance and their actual value. Also the resistance and capacitance value of the wires is not taken into account, even those values are so small, its having reasonable impact on the accuracy.