[sdiy] How to discharge a capacitor ?

[megaohm]

I'll try and be more specific:
  Let's say I want to discharge a 4700uF electrolytic capacitor. There are a
couple in the power supply portion of the circuit. Do I take one end of the
resistor and attach it to the negative leg of the cap, then take the other
end of the resistor and attach it to the positive leg of the cap? What size
resistor do you suggest? What power rating should the resistor have? There
are also some larger and smaller caps, will the same resistor work for them?
Or should it be larger, smaller, different power rating?
 peng

 On 11/15/05, Batz Goodfortune <batzman-nr at all-electric.com> wrote:
>
> Y-ellow All.
>
> At 03:30 PM 11/15/05 -0800, Harry Bissell Jr wrote:
> >megaohm <megaohm1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Sort of an "idiot's guide" to discharging caps. This would be
> >> immensly helpful.
> >That'd be EASY.
> >
> >Discharge them with a screwdriver... ;^P
>
> And if you don't have a screwdriver, the old standby of sticking your
> tongue across the terminals is often workable.
>
> I have a mate who once claimed he could measure up to 50 volts with his
> tongue. His tongue was accurate to within about 1% but got a bit
> non-linear
> after about 35 volts. Mind you he was also the engineer who claimed...
> "There is no part of the human body that cannot be used in the
> pursuit of electronic engineering."
>
> And I'll leave the rest to your imagination.
>
> NOTE: Leave the bleed resistor on the cap for a while, they have a nasty
> habit of self charging. Something else Nige could tell you about at
> length.
>
> Be absolutely Icebox.
>
> _ __ _ __International Pain-in-the-Ass and prophet of doom__
> | "_ \ | |
> | |_)/ __ _| |_ ____ ALL ELECTRIC KITCHEN
> | _ \ / _` | __|___ |Your source of Armageddon in a musically crass world
> | |_) | (_| | |_ / /
> |_,__/ \__,_|\__|/ / Disgusting-> http://all-electric.com
> / ,__ Music-> http://all-electric.com/music_downloads.html
> Goodfortune |_____| Cult -----> http://www.subgenius.com
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://synth-diy.org/pipermail/synth-diy/attachments/20051115/471cecfa/attachment.htm>