The Capacitor Abyss-yes, can it get any better?

I agree with @birchoak, it is a cheap hobby compared to others.
And so rewarding! We can listen to music every day, rain or shine, for hours on end, but the amount of actual time doing the sport on a boat or downhill skiing is very small and is often eclipsed by weather, cranky passengers/cranky captain, lengthy driving/equipment preparation. Stereo: turn on. Select source. Play music. Dabbling with hi-fi innards is optional, and you may confine yourself to polishing the face plate or go full nuts and attempt a custom tube amplifier build.
 
And so rewarding! We can listen to music every day, rain or shine, for hours on end, but the amount of actual time doing the sport on a boat or downhill skiing is very small and is often eclipsed by weather, cranky passengers/cranky captain, lengthy driving/equipment preparation. Stereo: turn on. Select source. Play music. Dabbling with hi-fi innards is optional, and you may confine yourself to polishing the face plate or go full nuts and attempt a custom tube amplifier build.
Very hard to be in the proper shape to downhill ski for longer than the lifts are open each day if you don't go only on the weekends. You just get worn out and now that I'm a couple years older, that might be a bit sooner, not taking the last ride up the hill to ski down in the fading light.

As to dabbling with the innards, I believe that is the way 46.3% of the AKers that are doing recaps and such have to get intimate with their gear. They like it so much they just want to dabble in it, keep it alive forever and many times go way too far with it. But it is a cheap hobby and I don't care what others do with their gear, even if they destroy the very last one existing in the world of a unit I covet. It is their gear and they can do what they want, including totally inappropriate color LED lighting for their units.
 
Haven't posted anything here in a while, but learned something new yesterday. Forgive me if I'm the last one to find out about this. I mostly use the SI (Système International) system, modern version of the metric system, or what I like to call the "everything makes logical sense" system. Also known as the mks (meter kilogram second) system. In that system the unit of capacitance is the Farad.

Back in olden times people also used the cgs (centimeter gram second) system. You'd think everything would be similar, but it turns out the unit of capacitance in the cgs system is the centimeter. 1 centimeter of capacitance is equal to about 1.113 picofarads. Apparently there were even physical capacitors marked in centimeters, probably prior to the '50s. Never seen one, never knew they existed, but there you go, trivia of the day.

Apparently the distance refers to the radius of a sphere with a charge on it.

BTW, our Imperial and U.S. Customary Units systems fall in the "Alice in Wonderland" category, where it's a miracle that any science was ever accomplished at all.
 
Haven't posted anything here in a while, but learned something new yesterday. Forgive me if I'm the last one to find out about this. I mostly use the SI (Système International) system, modern version of the metric system, or what I like to call the "everything makes logical sense" system. Also known as the mks (meter kilogram second) system. In that system the unit of capacitance is the Farad.

Back in olden times people also used the cgs (centimeter gram second) system. You'd think everything would be similar, but it turns out the unit of capacitance in the cgs system is the centimeter. 1 centimeter of capacitance is equal to about 1.113 picofarads. Apparently there were even physical capacitors marked in centimeters, probably prior to the '50s. Never seen one, never knew they existed, but there you go, trivia of the day.

Apparently the distance refers to the radius of a sphere with a charge on it.

BTW, our Imperial and U.S. Customary Units systems fall in the "Alice in Wonderland" category, where it's a miracle that any science was ever accomplished at all.
Try getting anything done with the Roman numeral system.
 
We inhabit a giant capacitor of about 680 uF, give or take. (Sometimes it's not about the size of the capacitance of one's planet's, but what one does with it.)

Physics was a long time ago. BUT, consider the capacitance of a sphere, which depends upon its area:
Given:
r = Radius (Meter)
A = 4π x r (Meters)
ϵ = Vacuum Permittivity = 8.5 x 10^-12 (Farad / Meter)

Then:
C = A x
ϵ (Farad)

Radius of the earth is 6,356.8 km, so that should be about 679 uF if I correctly computed the math.

The other plate is a virtual one situated at infinity. (A similar rule is why a physicist only milks perfectly spherical cows of uniform density.)

As far as physical representations, one can build sensors using the force on the two plates.
 
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Try getting anything done with the Roman numeral system.

Yeah, that. Always cited as why the Romans never discovered number theory.

Well, that plus the fact that they were all infected with brain worms, flukes, protozoa, and a variety of microbes from wiping their bums with infected sponges and stepping in baths loaded with parasites. Oh, the joy that was Roman sanitation. Plus the lead problem...
 
Yeah, that. Always cited as why the Romans never discovered number theory.

Well, that plus the fact that they were all infected with brain worms, flukes, protozoa, and a variety of microbes from wiping their bums with infected sponges and stepping in baths loaded with parasites. Oh, the joy that was Roman sanitation. Plus the lead problem...
Other than that, the aquaducts, paved roads, and arches were cool.
 
I learn something new here every day.

Me too.
Unfortunately I forget more things than I learn many days:rolleyes:

Yeah, that. Always cited as why the Romans never discovered number theory.

Well, that plus the fact that they were all infected with brain worms, flukes, protozoa, and a variety of microbes from wiping their bums with infected sponges and stepping in baths loaded with parasites. Oh, the joy that was Roman sanitation. Plus the lead problem...

Doh,
Missed the lead comment 'til I started to add.
I should've known better it wouldn't be missed:whip:
 

BTW, our Imperial and U.S. Customary Units systems fall in the "Alice in Wonderland" category, where it's a miracle that any science was ever accomplished at all.

This is so true. Next size up from a 13/16 is what? Hell I don't know. Next size up in the SI units from a 21 is a 22, simple.
 
Other than that, the aquaducts, paved roads, and arches were cool.

Absolutely amazing what slaves can build with the proper incentive, isn't it?

Arches, cobblestone roads, and aquaducts, however, predated the Romans by centuries. I do agree that it was Roman engineering which made all of them widespread, but the Romans were great adopters of exogenous technologies.
 
Missed the lead comment 'til I started to add. I should've known better it wouldn't be missed

Eh, the comment was covered by RoHS. No reference to Roman lead is permitted without forms filed in octuplets and a hearing to prove one must use the word "lead" in the sentence as no safer substitute exists.
 
The entire planet is only 680 uf? Surely not! :idea:

Truth.

It's not the best way to build a capacitor. Not sayin', just sayin'. Check my math if you don't believe me. I put all the equations and numbers out there.

A better way to build a capacitor the size of a planet is to etch the surface to dramatically increase its area and then cover it with a conductive gel.
 
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