Title: Combination or capacitors in series and parallel.

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Capacitors are one of the most basic components in electronics, their job is to momentarily
store charge, they are like tiny batteries, but in practical applications more complicated
combinations of these capacitors are used, most common type of combinations are series and
parallel combination,
Series Combination:

Consider three capacitors C1, C2 & C3 connected in series with each other as shown in the
figure, the positive plate of one capacitor is attached to the negative plate of the other capacitor.
Now if we consider this whole arrangement as one single capacitor, what would be the net
capacitance of it?
If we look closely we can notice that the negative plate of C1 and positive plate of C2 are the
same so the net charge carried by them is zero, so this will be the same with C2 and C3, hence
it will behave as a big capacitor with two plates the size of C1 and C2 with the distance between
them the same as the sum of the distances between individual plates, we know that capacitance
increases inversely with change in distance between the plates, therefore the total capacitance
will always be less than the least individual capacitance in the arrangement,

C=

1
1 1 1
+ +
C1 C2 C3

Lets take another scenario where capacitors in parallel, in this case the distance between the
capacitors is unchanged, and the only thing that is changed would be its plate area, because
instead of one pair there are now three plates with the same distance between them, therefore
the net capacitance of this arrangement will be the sum of individual capacitances.
This is same as resistors in series; we can put this mathematically as follows,

C=C1 +C 2+ C3
So now we know that capacitance diminishes in a series combination and capacitance
increases in a parallel combination, lets solve a problem on capacitance,
Find the effective capacitance for the following arrangement,

This complicated circuit can be broken down in to smaller circuits, lets start find the effective
capacitance for the inner most circuit,

C=C1 +C 2
Ca=1+3=4
Similarly lets find the capacitance of the rest,

1/Cb= (1/4)+(1/4)=1/2
Therefore Cb = 2
Now lets find the net capacitance of the lower half of the circuit

Cc=6+2=8
1/ Cd=1/8+1/8=1 /4

Cd=4
Therefore the total capacitance

Ctotal=2+ 4=6

Therefore we can apply the principle of series and parallel combination to any circuit, to know
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