RC discharge
What you are seeing: a capacitor charged to discharging through a resistor . Kirchhoff's loop equation gives with . The current is just , also exponentially decaying. The orange ball on the circuit diagram represents the charge leaking from the capacitor through the resistor.
Look for the canonical time constants: drops to percent at , to half at , and to 1 percent at . Total energy dissipated as heat in equals the initial .
V_0 (V)10.0
R (kOhm)10.0
C (uF)10.0
V (V):0
I (mA):0
00WHAT TO TRY
- Vary each control and watch the rail readouts respond.
- Compare the diagnostic plot against the live scene.