A simple demonstration showing how capacitors can be used to smooth a full wave rectified DC power supply. Useful when teaching the capacitor topic in A-level Physics. Using a 10 microF capacitors and a 390 Ohm and then 820 Ohm resistor shows different levels of smoothing an finally a 2200 microF capacitor on its own smooths it perfectly but if too much current is drawn by e.g. a 12V filament bulb then the smoothing becomes less than perfect again. An oscilloscope is used to display the potential difference against time graph.
If you are a science or physics teacher then you might like to visit my website where I have sets of physics teaching ideas sorted by topic.
https://www.teachphysics.orgThanks to the Ogden Trust for my senior teacher fellowship which gave me the time needed to produce the video of this demonstration. You can find out more about the Ogden Trust here:
https://www.ogdentrust.com/