[sdiy] Capacitors questions

[harrybissell]

Hi Ryan et al

search Google for "capacitors" and "Harry Bissell" to find my FAQ.
Its on a whole bunch of sites including a few I never dreamed of :^P

You can find Polystyrene caps at www.mouser.com under the Xicon
brand.

The direction of the cap is important, especially in the rabid types like
Tantalum (they blow violently)

The presumption is... you hook the "+" to whatever side of the circuit
is more positive with respect to DC.   Sometimes from the circuit, there
is no doubt which side that is...

When the cap is being used to set a limit on frequency response... sometimes

there is NO net DC there.  Other times the polarity is unknown,

They make a type of cap called "Non-polar" Electrolytic.  I use these for
all my
coupling caps that are larger in value than I can get with FILM capacitors
(usually
this is somewhere around 0.5uF)

helps ???

H^) harry

Ryan Williams wrote:

> hi all,
>
> I've got a simple question here about electrolytic capacitors. I
> understand that the positive side has to have a greater voltage than the
> negative side or else it will explode, but I don't understand how they
> work with AC signals when blocking the DC part of the signal. like this:
>
> module_input----||-----module
>                    +
> incase it doesn't show up right, the '+' side is on the 'module' side.
>
> how does this work? I've seen this on many synth diy schematics, but all
> the capacitor tutorials I've seen do not talk about this. It just
> doesn't make sense to me since the signal is AC.
>
> -----------
>
> one more question: Does anyone know where to find 1% polystyrene
> capacitors in the US? I need them in 100nF sizes.
>
> Thanks,
> Ryan