/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>798715
How do they smooth DC?
Capacitors can save charges and release them when it's needed. When a voltage spike occurs, the capacitor will suck that charge in, when the negative part of the spike comes the capacitor will release that charge, smoothing the wave. The bigger the capacitor is the more ripple they can take during more time. It's like saving money, when you have lots of money you save them on a bank (the capacitor) and when you're running low the bank can fill that void so you can keep buying things.

This is only of the uses, they are also a resistor which varies with frequency. You know DC can't pass through a capacitor, but AC can, so as the frequency increases it's logic to think that signal will be favored and will pass though the capacitor. And you just discovered filters!
The inverse happens with inductors. But that's another story.

>How about transistors?
Transistors are the shit because they are like a switch, but they're not mechanical, you can tell a transistor to switch two transistors and those two switch another two and so on... without any mechanical elements. These switches happen to be very sensitive too, so with a little input you can make everything work, amplifying signals... A combination of resistors, capacitors and other elements gives them special configurations that are capable of many things, from counting to 10 to oscillating millions of times per second. This had to done with vacuum tubes before, which were humongous compared to transistors, that's why we've jumped to black and white TVs to smartphones that vastly exceed the computing power of the best supercomputers made a few decades ago. Thus main advantage of the transistors is their size, you can fit millions in a silicon chip because they are literally "printed" using lithography, you can't just print millions of vacuum valves in a finger nail!