Ac Circuits

Discussion In the experiment AC circuits, the purpose was to see the effect that a capacitor, resistor, and inductor have on the voltage, and current of a circuit. We created circuits with 2 resistors, a capacitor and a resistor, and then a capacitor, resistor, and an inductor. The circuits were then hooked up to a function generator, and oscilloscope to find the voltage across certain frequencies and then calculate the peak current, capacitive reactance or the inductive reactance, and phase difference. When beginning the experiment, we measured the resistance of both resistors with a digital multi-meter and received values for R1 as 559 Ω +or- 10 Ω and for R2 as 108 Ω +or- 10 Ω. After measuring the resistance, we placed each of them in series on a circuit board and we increased the frequency four different times ranging from 100 Hz to 5,000Hz and measured the voltage across each resistor and determined the phase relationship. We then replaced the 559 Ω resistor with a 1μF capacitor, where we performed a similar process, only this time we increased the frequency eight times, ranging from 100 Hz to 5,000 Hz measuring the voltage across the capacitor and resistor, and finding the value for Δ t. We then calculated the peak current, capacitive reactance, and phase difference, and then graphed the reactive capacitance vs. the period to get a slope (3731.3) and then determine an experimental value for the capacitance (4.2654*10^-5 F) where we then calculated the percent difference (96.52%). Next, we replaced the capacitor with an inductor, repeated the same process, except rather than measuring capacitive reactance, we measured inductive reactance, and then plotted inductive reactance vs. the frequency and used the slope (.0185) to calculate the value for L (.0306). Next, we added the capacitor back into circuit, aligning them all in series where we repeated the process finding the voltages across the inductor, capacitor, and resistor, then graphed the current vs.