RC time constant

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08:50:40

Play with the switch and notice that it takes about 5 milliseconds to completely charge the capacitor. Actually, 5 ms is five times RC, where RC is the time constant of this circuit.

Time constant characterizes how a first order linear time-invariant system (like this RC circuit) responds to a step input. The output reaches 99.3 % of its final value in 5 time constants after the step is applied.

published 11 years ago

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