Capacitance meters measure the potential capacity of capacitors and come in various sizes and types. They work by measuring the capacitance, or ability to store an electric charge, of a capacitor. Capacitors come in different sizes and require specialized capacitance meters for accurate readings.
A capacitance meter is a specialized piece of test equipment. It is used to determine the potential capacity of a given capacitor. These meters come in many varieties and sizes to measure capacity in many different contexts. The ability to measure capacitance is included in some but not all multimeters.
Physically, most of these devices are simple handheld units with two leads that can be connected to a capacitor for testing. Older models used an analog display, but are now quite rare. Specialized types of capacitance meters, especially those for testing very large or very small capacitors, are likely to be larger units with several types of specialized probes appropriate for the type of measurement a particular capacitance meter is designed to perform.
Electric charge can be accumulated and temporarily stored in a capacitor. Capacitors hold energy in the form of positive and negative charges on two conducting plates separated by a resistor. A field forms between these elements and can contain a charge. This charge can then be released. Capacitors aren’t as useful for long-term energy storage as batteries, but they are capable of discharging stored energy much faster, making them useful for some applications that require such rapid discharge but also potentially dangerous.
The ability of a capacitor to store an electric charge is called its capacitance, and it is this value that is measured by a capacitance meter. The simplest measurement method is to apply an electric current to a discharged capacitor and then measure how fast the voltage across the capacitor changes. With a known input, this process can be used to determine the capacitance of relatively large capacitors with a small test current. A constant voltage alternating current can also be used for testing purposes.
Capacitors are produced in a wide variety of sizes. The large designs used in power transmission can hold many orders of magnitude more electrical energy than the extremely small capacitors built into modern integrated circuits. The range of capacitor sizes means that most types of capacitance meters are optimized to measure the capacitance in capacitors of only a certain size.
The small test current generated by the capacitance meter function of a standard handheld digital multimeter is not sufficient to generate an accurate reading for a large industrial capacitor. Likewise, this same small current might actually be powerful enough to overwhelm the resistor in a tiny capacitor located on a circuit. There are specialized and highly accurate models of capacity meter for measuring capacity at this level.
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