How Do You Calculate the Equivalent Capacitance of a Complex Circuit?

kyrax · Jul 7, 2009

Homework Statement

Find the equivalent capacitance of the picture in the attachment file

Circuit diagram with a battery at the bottom and five capacitors in a bridge arrangement: 3 uF top left, 5 uF top right, 6 uF in the middle, 2 uF bottom left, and 3 uF bottom right.

Homework Equations

Formula for series capacitors: C_total = 1 / (1/C1 + 1/C2 + ... + 1/Cn), with the title Series Capacitances.

Formula titled Parallel Capacitances: C_total = C1 + C2 + ... Cn, the sum of capacitances for capacitors connected in parallel.

The Attempt at a Solution

The circuit is neither in parallel or series. I tried breaking it up into series and parallel but it seem too easy to be correct. Any tips on solving this?

berkeman · Jul 8, 2009

Since the circuit capacitances are not symmetric, you may just need to do it the brute force way, and write the KCL equations.

How Do You Calculate the Equivalent Capacitance of a Complex Circuit?

Homework Statement

Homework Equations

The Attempt at a Solution

Discussion

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