hey everyone I
thought I'd talk a little
bit today about electrical impedance
this is a topic that confuses a lot of
people probably because it's taught sort
of backwards in my opinion where a lot
of people you know spend all their time
on the heavy-duty math involved and then
kind of end with a practical circuit but
I like to go the other way and start
with a practical circuit and then as we
move along uncover the topics as they
become relevant so let me show you what
I have set up today our task for today
is to build a circuit that can power
just a standard cheapo plain led
directly from the AC mains while using
as few components as possible and to do
it in a relatively energy efficient
manner so to start we may come up with a
circuit that looks something like this
where the LEDs are set up back-to-back
so that as the AC power switches
direction one of the LEDs will light up
so one will be on for both halves of the
cycle but obviously we can't connect the
LED right up to to house current because
the voltage is so high that there would
be way too much current flowing so if
you just took an LED don't do this by
the way and just put it right into the
outlet it would probably explode in a
violent pop because the amount of
current would be measured in you know
hundreds or thousands of amps or
something so we can do to keep that from
happening is to put a big fat resistor
between the LEDs and the the loop formed
by the power source so how do we figure
out what resistor value we can do that
by measuring the LED I measured this
cheapo green LED and it just came out to
be about 18 milliamps at two volts and I
got that number just by connecting it to
my power supply and just getting a
really quick you know rough reading okay
so if we know that the voltage across
the line is a hundred twenty volts on
average for one cycle
the current will flow out through the
line through the diode through the
resistor and back and this whole thing
reverses obviously when the AC goes into
the other phase so we'll just look at
this one phase so we've got 120 volts
here 118 volts here because we know the
diode is going to drop two volts at the
proper current and then the resistor has
to drop a hundred eighteen volts at the
proper current so then we just use Ohm's
law voltage over current 118 volts over
18 million member to always enter the
units in standard units so amps not
milliamps and we end up with 6.6 kilo
ohms okay easy enough now what I'm gonna
do is just change that up just a little
bit and this will become clear later on
what I'm gonna do is put 1k here and
five point six K here and that may seem
a little strange right now but this will
make sense later on the LEDs don't
really care whether the resistor is on
the left side or the right side
so splitting the resistance stuff like
that doesn't really change anything with
the circuit so here it is you can just
see the the small resistor the two LEDs
and this is a big resistor using a big
resistor is necessary because this is
going to dissipate some pretty serious
power I should also point out that
unless you're familiar with the hazards
involved with you know AC line current
you probably would not want to try this
one home this is more of a demonstration
so I'm gonna plug this in the LEDs come
on and hopefully you can see yeah its
drawing about 2.2 watts according to
this meter so 2.2 watts for those two
measly resistor or two measly LEDs it's
not very good at all if you were an
electrical engineer and you came up with
this the Energy Star people would not be
very happy with you at all so I'm gonna
unplug it and just after this just after
there's five five or 10 seconds of
running
this this resistor is you know not
burning hot but pretty good good and
warm and if this were left running for
10 minutes or something that resistor
might be too hot to even hold it said
well it's a 5 watt resistor it would get
pretty warm so we got to come up with
another design and that design is this
so what I've done is replace the
resistor this was the first design here
I want to say basically just replace r2
with a capacitor so you might be
thinking well what's that going to do
they actually serve a very similar
purpose in the circuit they both serve
to limit the current so let's I built
the capacitor circuit that's over here
basically the same thing with just a
capacitor in place of that fat resistor
let's plug this one in the LEDs are
about as bright as they were the first
time but notice the power meter it's
only drawing 0.4 watts instead of 2.2 so
our change the change from a resistor to
a capacitor has actually made our
circuit quite a bit more efficient so
let's take a look at why I'm gonna
unplug this and also discharge the
capacitor it had a little tiny pop I
don't know if you heard that or not but
you wouldn't want to if you did build
this circuit keep in mind that when you
unplug from the wall here that capacitor
is gonna store a charge and you know
just short it out like this like I say
you should probably be familiar with
with 120 volt safety if you're going to
attempt this one so let's take a look at
that schematic again okay so I said that
the capacitor and the resistor in the in
the first circuit are serving similar
purposes they're both restricting the
amount of current that can flow through
this circuit and this the units that we
use to describe a restriction of current
are ohms so these both actually have a
value that we can state in ohms but why
are capacitors not rated in ohms like if
you go to
the electronics catalog and look down
the list of capacitors nothing is in
there is gonna say anything about owns
so how do we do it we use this formula
right here one over two pi times the
frequency in Hertz times the capacitance
in farad's so this capacitor is 0.47
micro farad's and the frequency is 60
Hertz because we I'm in the United
States and all the line power is 60
Hertz here so 1 over 2 pi times 60 times
0.47 times 10 to the negative 6 and if
you calculate this all out you get 5.6
kilo ohms just like in the first circuit
they're almost exactly equivalent and so
this this value here X is called
reactance and reactance is basically a
resistance to alternating current flow
so they're both you know in ohms this is
the same own value as the resistor the
difference is that the reactance depends
on the frequency so the reason they
don't print capacitors with own values
in a catalog is because they don't know
what kind of circuit you're gonna put it
in so if we were using this in Europe
where the power is 50 Hertz the own
value would be slightly different
because the frequency is different
so what's impedance impedance is the
combination of reactance and resistance
unfortunately we can't just add them
together impedance which is represented
by Z is equal to the square root of the
resistance squared plus the reactance
squared and you geometry guys out there
will see that this is how to calculate
the length of a hypotenuse knowing the
leg lengths of a triangle so we'll get
into this later but just for now I just
wanted to show you where impedance comes
from impedance is just the combination
of the pure DC resistance and the AC
resistance known as reactants so the
impedance of a resistor Z equals the
square root of R squared plus Z
because the resistor doesn't have any
reactance a resistor has the same
resistance at all frequencies if it's
perfect a capacitor has no resistance if
it's perfect and it has reactance so the
impedance of a pure resistor is just the
resistance and the impedance of a
capacitor is just the reactance and we
had the formula here for the reactance
of the capacitor is just 1 over 2 pi the
frequency times the capacitance so I'm
just going to show you that you can if
we let's say we wanted to know the
entire amount of RP dance for our whole
circuit here what's what's the impedance
for this whole thing we're gonna make a
really nasty assumption here we're going
to assume that the LED is actually
behaves like a resistance which of
course it doesn't but in this case it's
not going to make much difference
because it's such a small part of the
circuit so here's the Z total for our
hole we're going to approximate the
resistor with a 110 ohm resistor so
we've got 1k plus 110 squared plus 5,600
squared and take the square root of that
so the entire impedance for the whole
circuit is 5.7 kilo ohms so basically
impedance is just a resistance that
depends on frequency that's really all
it is
and so with a capacitor at higher
frequencies it will have a lower
impedance and a higher impedance at
lower frequencies so I think what would
happen if you took a capacitor and just
put it across a power supply once the
capacitor charges up no current flows
because that capacitor is infinite
resistance at DC currents let me just
draw this out here for a capacitor this
is reactance and this is frequency when
the frequency is low it's you know zero
basically the reactance is infinite
at the high frequencies the reactance
becomes a very low value and this has a
a one over F relationship because of the
formula we had 1 over 2 pi FC so you can
see that for any capacitor at 0 it's the
Imperius and resulting impedance is
infinite and at infinitely high
frequencies the reactance is zero so for
infinitely high frequencies the
capacitor is like a short sometimes the
water analogy is helpful so think of
electrical current like water flowing
through a pipe in the case of a resistor
in our circuit here the electricity
flows through here and is restricted the
flow is restricted by these resistors
but in the case of the capacitor the you
know water or electricity flows into
here in the capacitor acts like a bucket
so the water flows into the bucket and
it fills up the bucket and once the
bucket is full
nothing nothing continues to flow the
circuit basically stops but in an AC
circuit the voltage flips and in our
case 60 times a second so when the
voltage flips polarity the bucket dumps
its contents back through the circuit
and makes these LEDs light up so you
might be wondering how does our circuit
become more energy efficient it has the
same impedance we said that we show that
these circuits are almost equivalent we
had five point six K for this resistor 5
point 6 K for this capacitor this is the
same this is the same how come the power
meter only read 2 point 2 watts for this
case and only point 4 watts for this
case we're going to talk about that next
time in the exciting conclusion to our
series on impedance here where we're
going to talk about power factor volt
amps and watts if you've ever wondered
about those things I'm going to talk
about those next you can actually use
these these cool little power meters to
measure power factor volt amps and such
ok I hope that was helpful
stay tuned and subscribe for future
electric electrical tutorial
and feel free to post comments about
what you'd what topics you'd like to see
okay see you next time bye
PostScript so you might be wondering why
I left this resistor in with the
capacitor circuit I said that we could
you know size a capacitor such that it
would replace almost any impedance that
we want in this circuit so why did I
bother leaving this resistor in it's
actually more of a practical matter I
mean if in a perfect world we definitely
could build this circuit without any
resistance and make it purely capacitive
use just a capacitor to limit the
current but here's the problem in in AC
current you know we have a cycle that
looks like this and at some point we
have to build our circuit and then plug
it into the wall so if we happen and and
this is just running constantly so if we
happened to plug in our circuit right at
this point in time everything would be
great the circuit would see a wave that
was nice and and and you know starting
at zero and flowing up and down normally
but what happens if we decided to plug
in our circuit here that wouldn't be so
good so then you know if zero is here
our circuit would see something like
this voltage would be zero and then
suddenly we put the plug into the outlet
and suddenly we get a nice sharp
transition right up like this and then a
nice smooth sine wave now this sharp
edge right here is not sixty Hertz it's
actually composed of a bunch of
frequencies many of which are higher
than sixty Hertz so our capacitor has a
much lower impedance during this very
sharp spike this very sharp voltage
transition and that would cause too much
current to flow through the circuit and
it would cause the LED to die so I tried
it you know obviously I wanted to find
out what would happen myself so I built
the circuit you know just like you see
here without the resistor and plugged it
in and after about ten
cycles of me plugging and unplugging it
the LED was just about toasted it would
still light but kind of dimly it wasn't
doing very well so during this really
short time this is probably only gonna
last about a millisecond there will be
much higher current flowing through the
LED so this limits the so called inrush
current and it's purely a practical
matter just because you know you can't
plug in your circuit at the zero cross
point every time you have to anticipate
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