A parallel-plate capacitor is a device used to store electrical energy. It consists of two conducting plates separated by a small distance and insulated from each other.
When a voltage is applied to a parallel-plate capacitor, one plate becomes positively charged while the other becomes negatively charged. This creates an electric field between the plates, which stores energy in the form of electrical potential energy.
The equation for calculating the charge on a parallel-plate capacitor is Q = CV, where Q is the charge, C is the capacitance of the capacitor, and V is the voltage applied across the plates.
The distance between the plates of a parallel-plate capacitor is directly proportional to the charge stored on the capacitor. This means that the farther apart the plates are, the higher the charge on the capacitor will be.
The unit of measurement for capacitance is the farad (F). This unit is named after the physicist Michael Faraday and is equivalent to one coulomb of charge per one volt of potential difference.