How Do Capacitors in Series and Parallel Circuits Distribute Charge?

[seang]

Given a Circuit where capacitor A is serially connected to capacitor (B+C), where B and C are in parallel, I have difficulty figuring things out. Ill try to draw the circuit.

                  ---|B|---- 
----|A|------              ------- 
                  ---|C|----

I think you get the idea. Say all the capacitors are of equal value, and one volt is applied across the circuit. How would you determine that capacitors B and C hold 1/2 the amount of charge that capacitor A does?

 

[member 553083]

Since capacitors B and C are connected in parallel, they will have the same voltage across them. This means that the charge stored by capacitor A will be distributed equally between capacitors B and C - each one will hold 1/2 of the charge of capacitor A.