Question

Please be clear in your answers, thank you!

1. What is the effect on the charging and discharging times if the capacitance is roughly tripled?
2. What is the effect on the charging and discharging times if the resistance is roughly doubled?
3. How do you think the characteristic time for an RC circuit depends on R and C?

Answer 1

Time constant of a capacitor is given by τ=RC. It takes about 5 time constants to discharge or charge capacitor completely. The RC time constant will also increase with increasing capacitor or resistor and so it will take longer to charge or discharge the capacitor.

Charge accumulate on capacitor plate through resistor during charging and dissipate from the capacitor plate through resistor during discharging. Hence characteristic time constant depends on R and C.