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Sign convention for passive components

The sign convention for passive components defines what we mean by positive and negative voltage and current. Created by Willy McAllister.

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  • piceratops tree style avatar for user Fábio Alvarenga
    At Sal says that capacitors and inductors do not amplify a signal. That got me confused 'cause I was thinking that was exactly the function of a capacitor: give a short boost to voltage. Can someone explain, please?
    (2 votes)
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    • purple pi purple style avatar for user APDahlen
      Hello Fábio,

      Perhaps you heard this in regards to after-market car audio. Here we will often find large (1 Farad or larger) capacitors installed at the DC power input to the power amplifiers. Their purpose is to "boost" the input to the amplifier.

      Here "boost" is an inappropriate word. A better word is to "maintain" voltage. To understand why consider the music. The lowest music tones (thumping base) requires significant power. This power in turn requires significant current flow. This high current flow can cause the voltage to sag. When the input voltage sags the amplifier's output power also drops. We could calculate the voltage drop using Ohm's law... The important point is that the voltage sag is related to the resistance of the circuit and to the ability of the car's electrical system to maintain the voltage.

      This is where the capacitor shines. You see, the capacitor has what we call a low equivalent series resistance. By installing the capacitor close to the amplifier the capacitor can provide the immediate current demands of the amplifier for a "thump" of the music. The capacitor then recharges between thumps. The results is less sag and more power output.

      Notice that the capacitor did not amplify the signal. It only provided the audio amplifier a more constant voltage which allowed the amplifier to output a higher power.

      Regards,

      APD
      (17 votes)
  • blobby green style avatar for user Steven
    So which directions do the electrons flow?
    (3 votes)
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  • leaf green style avatar for user wcyi56
    At , I think the current direction is only correct when the capacitor is charging, when it is discharging, the current direction turns the opposite. Am I right?
    (4 votes)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user 김상우
    But when you mention current "goes in on the positive end" you are referring to negative charges as current right? Because conventional current as we all have learnt in school flow AWAY from the positive terminal because we take conventional current as positive charges flowing.
    (4 votes)
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    • spunky sam orange style avatar for user Willy McAllister
      Using "conventional" current direction, current flows OUT of the positive terminal of power sources (batteries) .

      When we place voltage and current labels on passive components (resistors, capacitors, inductors) we put the positive sign of the voltage label on the end where current comes IN.
      (1 vote)
  • hopper happy style avatar for user Natalie Edelstein
    At how would you call a battery or voltage source a passive component if current flows OUT of the positive terminal and INTO the negative terminal, opposite of what Willy is saying for other passive components?
    (2 votes)
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  • hopper cool style avatar for user Abhishek Kumar
    I thought Capacitors are used in alternating current, so how can there be only a single direction? The terminals must keep flipping their position. This happens with all the components in Alternating current...right?
    (1 vote)
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    • purple pi purple style avatar for user APDahlen
      Hello Abhishek,

      Correct, capacitors are used in both AC and DC circuits. In the AC system the capacitor is charging, discharging, charging with opposite polarity, and then discharging.

      Here is an interesting fact for you. Every physical capacitor is rated for either AC or DC operation. Depending on their chemistry some capacitors may be used for both. In general AC rated capacitors can be used in DC. DC rated capacitors will self destruct, sometime spectacularly, when used in AC.

      I made another video related to your question. It is focused on the inductor but the same argument holds for the capacitor. See:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz4DOi3LNdM

      Regards,

      APD
      (3 votes)
  • male robot hal style avatar for user mohammed khan
    so the essence of this lecture is ; the sign convention for passive circuit elements is that whenever we label the current through a passive component we should enter the current through the positive terminal of that component?
    (1 vote)
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  • leaf blue style avatar for user Junaid Shaikh
    what is meaning of the term ' to amplify ' ?
    (1 vote)
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    • spunky sam orange style avatar for user Willy McAllister
      "Amplify" means to make larger. Suppose you have an electronic circuit that accepts a voltage as its input, and produces an output voltage that is a copy of the input, except larger by a factor of 10. We would say that circuit "amplifies" the input signal, and we would call that circuit an "amplifier" with a "gain" of 10.

      A passive component, (resistor, capacitor, or inductor), cannot on its own cause a voltage to increase. On the other hand, silicon devices called 'transistors" are able to do that.
      (2 votes)
  • aqualine tree style avatar for user Clayton Benignus
    Some Definitional Questions:

    If a Chip is composed of Passives, then is that Chip must be a Passive?

    Is a Transistor a Passive?

    Are OpAmps Passives and why?
    (1 vote)
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    • purple pi purple style avatar for user APDahlen
      Hello Clayton,

      We could use the word "active" to identify devices that contain amplifiers or digital logic. Using this definition a computer chips, transistors, and op-amps are all active devices.

      Resistors, capacitors, and inductors would all be passive. Most would also say a diode is a passive device although things get complex when we talk about GTOs, SCRs, and Triacs...

      Please leave a comment below if you would like to continue this conversation.

      Regards,

      APD
      (2 votes)
  • blobby green style avatar for user ISKO.SALIMJANOV
    should I have advanced level of physics to study electrical engineering ?
    (1 vote)
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Video transcript

- [Voiceover] Today we're gonna talk about the sign convention for passive components. It's a big mouthful, but it's a fairly simple idea. Well first of all, let's look at this word passive. Passive is the way we describe components that do not create power or components that do not amplify signals. So particularly resistors, as we have one here. Does not amplify a signal. Capacitors and inductors do not either. So all three of those are passive components. And sometimes we say something like a battery or a voltage source is a passive component because it can't amplify a signal. It does provide power, but it does not make signals bigger, it can't make a voltage larger than it already is. So we're gonna start with the way to label this resistor with its current and voltage. First we'll resort to Ohm's law, our friend, voltage equals current, which is i times r, and when we label this, when we label this device, here's a resistor, so we'll give that a label, and we're gonna put a voltage across this, something outside of this is gonna put a voltage across it and this end will be positive with respect to this end. And the question is, the question we want to answer is which direction does the current go? When the positive voltage is here and the negative voltage is here, which way's the current flow through this resistor? Does it go from top to bottom, or bottom to top? The answer is the positive current goes this way, it goes down, so that's i in this. And the current is going into the end with the positive sign on the voltage. Now I'm gonna draw another one of these, same sort of thing, and we'll do it a different way. We'll do this one sideways. And I'll label the voltage, here's r, and I'll put a voltage on it, and the voltage let's label it this way, we label the plus end this way and label the minus end this way. The question is which way does the current go? Well the current goes in the positive end so it goes in that way. And that's the sign convention for passive components. The current goes into the voltage on the positive terminal or the voltage. If I drew the arrow over here like this, that would still mean the same thing, it's still going in the positive and coming out the negative side. So when we draw this for capacitors and inductors, let's draw a capacitor over here, and there's c, and if I labeled this with a voltage, plus and minus v, then the passive sign convention tells me that I label the positive current going in, i. The same for an inductor. We'll draw a curly inductor, like that, we'll put a voltage on it this time. I'll put the voltage on this side, plus, minus v, this is our inductor, like that, and the current, the current goes in the top like that. So it goes in the same side as the plus. And the current comes out on the minus side. You can draw it either way you want. Let's practice some more, this time we'll do it with a resistor, again. Here's another resistor, and this time I'm gonna label the current first. I'm gonna say the current goes this way through the resistor. And now, using the passive component sign convention, how do we label the voltage? I wanna label the voltage. Where's the plus sign? Plus sign is on the side that the current goes in. The current's going in to this terminal, so that is the plus side of the resistor. And that's basically the idea of a sign convention for passive components. When we're setting up a circuit, if we have a complicated circuit, we're setting it up, we have to give names to all the voltages and all the currents. And this is the way you do it to make sure that Ohm's law comes out with the correct sign. That's why we have this sign convention.