[Towertalk] Tailtwister won't turn.

Chris BONDE ve7hcb@rac.ca
Mon, 05 Aug 2002 16:02:33 -0700


I have never understood the polarization of an electrolytic 
capacitor.   Does that mean they ack like diodes as well?

Chris opr VE7HCB

At 05:36 PM 2002-08-05 -0500, W0UN--John Brosnahan wrote:

>At 03:13 PM 8/5/2002 -0700, Mark wrote:
>
>
>>Why?  Does not matter, but the practice is fine! I do things by habit,
>>too.... It is AC .. does NOT matter.. pluskies or minusers...just back to
>>back.. did it for years in speaker crossovers as well as motor starting
>>capacitors .. as we are discussing and reading about here.  Mark  6dx
>
>We are talking POLARIZED electrolytic caps here--it  DOES matter.
>You can get away with it (sorta) with audio because the voltages
>typically are not that great--but they really need to be back to back
>and ideally with diodes across them to eliminate the reverse voltage
>in motor-starting applications.
>
>The real question is whether you need to divide the effective capacitance
>by two.  The caps are really NOT in series in the classical sense--but rather
>one cap handles the half cycle voltage of one polarity with the capacitance
>with which it is marked.   Then the other cap handles the other polarity
>half-cycle with its capacitance.  So it seems to me that maybe the
>effective value does not need to be halved.
>
>--John   W0UN
>
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