Christina Jean-Francois 111569694

Lab section: L13

Lab 7: LRC Circuit

Intro:

A RLC circuit (also known as a resonant circuit, tuned circuit, or LCR circuit) is an electrical

circuit consisting of a resistor (R), an inductor (L), and a capacitor (C), connected in series or in

parallel. This configuration forms a harmonic oscillator. In this lab, a square wave is applied to a

series LR circuit. The period of the square wave is adjusted to be long compared with the time

constant of the LR circuit and the exponential approach to steady state is observed. A decade

resistance box and a decade capacitance box will both be used to change the value of the

frequency of circuit.

Procedure:

In part I, we first calibrated the oscilloscope and set the function generator to 1kHz square

waves and connected them, making sure that the period was 1ms.

We connected the circuit to a decade resistor R that was set to 100Ω. We Adjusted the

oscilloscope for clear viewing conditions, Using the DC mode on the oscilloscope.

When the image we were looking for appeared o the screen, we sketched the oscilloscope trace

and recorded the value of the voltage and time at several points on the trace

We repeat the above procedure with R =200 Ω. For Part II, we

replaced the decade resistance box in the circuit with the decade capacitance box and repeated

the procedure.
Christina Jean-Francois 111569694
Lab section: L13

Analysis:

For both sections of this lab, square waves are applied to a series LR and LC circuit. The period

of the square wave is adjusted to be long compared with the time constant of the LR circuit and

the exponential approach to steady state is observed. Connect the figure as shown. in addition

to the decade box resistance R, the inductor also has some resistance. The inductors in this lab

it is approximately 2 Ω. Even though the LRC combination has a high impedance, we place a 1Ω

resistor across the output of the function generator, to make the overall impedance of the

circuit low which will be important for having a good signal to measure in this experiment.

In Part One of the lab, we obtain a graph on the oscilloscope that resembles a falling

logarithmic function as shown below:

This shows that as time is increasing, the voltage that is being provided to the resistor is falling.

When we put the log of the Voltage values by the time, we should obtain a negative diagonal

slope of the values. As seen in the graph in Figure 1, the value for inductance that we received

is -373.3. That value is the same in the graph, figure 2, where we had change the resistance to
Christina Jean-Francois 111569694
Lab section: L13

200 ohms. The inductance of the coil is not dependent on the resistor in the circuit, because the

change in resitors lead to no change in the slope.

In Part Two of the lab, we obtain a sinusoidal graph on the oscilloscope as shown below.

This shows that at time increase the voltage fluctuates between a positive and negative Voltage

with the peaks getting smaller as time becomes greater. We can determine the inductance of

the circuit by using the equation

1 𝑅𝑖 2
𝜔𝑑 = √ −
𝐿𝐶 4𝐿2

𝑅2 1
However the term 4𝐿𝑖 2 in this case reduces down to 0 Leaving us with only 𝜔𝑑 = √𝐿𝐶 to find the

inductance. 𝜔𝑑 can be calculated using the frequency we recorded and multiplying it by 2𝜋 to

get the equation 𝜔𝑑 = 2𝜋𝑓. When substituted in for the equation above, we can find the

inductance using the formula

1
2𝜋𝑓 = √
𝐿𝐶
Christina Jean-Francois 111569694
Lab section: L13

When the capacitance is .001uF we get a Inductance of 730 kH and with a capacitance of .004uF

we obtain an inductance of 182 kH. These do not agree with our results from part one. The

inductance has gotten much bigger than in Part one and are now positive values. The

inductance varies with the capacitance, for as the capacitance grew bigger then inductance of

the coil has gotten smaller.

Conclusion:

In this Lab we had to find the inductance of a coil using a resistor and a capacitor. In Part One

we had to find the inductance based on our resistance and the slope of our graph which we

found out to be -R/L. We observed that our values of inductance were the same for both

resistance in Part 1. In Part Two, we found that our inductance by using the capacitance and the

frequency. We found that our inductance for part two was significantly bigger then our Part

one. This could be due to some experimental error like calculating the value of the Frequency

wrong.