In this lab students will study RC and RL circuits. Students will investigate a RC circuit in which a capacitor is repeatedly charged and discharged and determine the time constant t of the RC circuit. Students then will investigate a RL circuit in which the current through the inductor coil repeatedly increases and decreases and determine the time constant t of the RL circuit. If a parallel-plate capacitor C is connected in series with a resistor R, and the two ends of the chain are connected to a battery as shown in the diagram below, then the battery will pump electrons from the plate connected to the negative terminal to the plate connected to the positive terminal. R coil is the resistance of the coil itself.
L is the self inductance of the inductor coil.
It contains various circuit elements. Different circuit elements are connected together by conductors on the back side of the board. The existing connections are shown schematically on the front side of the board. A power amplifier provides an output voltage which varies with time and is placed across various circuit elements. The voltage output of the power amplifier is in the form of a positive square wave function for which the voltage varies between 0 and 2V with a frequency of 5Hz. 5 times per second the power amplifier will sweep its output voltage from 0 to 2V and back to zero producing a square wave output as shown below.