Physics 100: Ac Circuits

How to calculate AC voltages, currents, power, and phase.

What you'll learn

How to analyze AC circuits

How to Calculate Power in AC circuits

Using Phasors to analyze AC Circuits

Driven RLC Circuits

Requirements

Understanding of Kirchoff's Circuit Law used in DC circuits

Description

Welcome to my course on AC circuits.   This course covers most of the material typically covered in a introductory physics undergraduate course. In this course you will learn how to analyze AC circuits.   The course starts with simple AC circuits with a generator and a single electrical component.   You will learn how to describe an AC signal in terms of an amplitude, frequency, and phase.   You will also learn how to calculate RMS values of voltage and current and how they are related to peak values.   After, more complex circuits are solved with several electrical components.   You will learn how to apply Kirchhoff's laws to AC circuits, how to calculate capacitive and inductive reactance, and use special techniques such as Phasor diagrams, to find the current amplitude and phase in an AC circuit.  We will also cover energy and power in AC circuits.   You will learn how to calculate the power supplied by the generator, power dissipated by resistors, energy stored in inductors and capacitors. You will also learn about basic step-up and step-down transformers and how to calculate the voltages and currents on the primary and secondary sides of a transformer.   This course has over 80 solved problems that will help you master the topic.   

Overview

Section 1: Introduction

Lecture 1 AC vs DC circuits

Lecture 2 Introduction to AC generators

Lecture 3 How to generate an AC signal: Basic Generator

Lecture 4 How to represent AC voltage using a rotating vector called a Phasor

Lecture 5 Example 1: Find the voltage equation from the graph and plot the phasors

Lecture 6 Average AC Signals

Lecture 7 Root-Mean Square Values

Section 2: Analyzing Simple AC circuits

Lecture 8 Introduction to simple AC circuits

Lecture 9 AC Current in a Resistor

Lecture 10 Power Dissipated in a Resistor

Lecture 11 Example Problem: Power Dissipated in a Resistor

Lecture 12 Capacitors in AC Circuits

Lecture 13 Capacitance Reactance

Lecture 14 Phasor Diagram for a Simple Capacitor Circuit

Lecture 15 Inductors in AC Circuits

Lecture 16 Inductive Reactance

Lecture 17 More on Reactance vs Resistance

Lecture 18 Phasor Diagram for a Simple Inductor Circuit

Lecture 19 ELI the ICE man

Section 3: Driven RLC Circuit

Lecture 20 Introduction to the series RLC Circuit

Lecture 21 Current in an RLC circuit

Lecture 22 Potential Drop Across the Resistor in an RLC Circuit

Lecture 23 Potential Drop Across Capacitor and Inductor in an RLC Circuit

Lecture 24 Using Phasors to Solve for the Maximum Current and the Phase Angle

Lecture 25 Summary of Driven RLC Circuit

Lecture 26 3 Conceptual RLC problems

Lecture 27 RLC Problem Example

Lecture 28 Power in RLC Circuit

Lecture 29 Resonance in RLC circuits

Lecture 30 Power Factor and Power Resonant Curves

Lecture 31 Example Problem Solution

Lecture 32 Calculating the Full Width at Half Maximum for Power Curves

Lecture 33 Quality Factor (Q-factor) for a Harmonic Oscillator Circuit

Lecture 34 Example Problem on Q-factor and FWHM

Section 4: AC Filters

Lecture 35 Introduction to AC filters

Lecture 36 RC Low-pass filter

Lecture 37 RC High-pass filter

Lecture 38 RL filters

Section 5: Transformers

Lecture 39 Introduction to Transformers

Lecture 40 Step-up and step-down transformers

Lecture 41 Power in Transformers

Lecture 42 Equivalent Resistance for Transformers

Lecture 43 Transformer Practice Problem 1

Lecture 44 Transformer Practice Problem 2

Section 6: Short Q&A: AC Circuits

Lecture 45 Problem Set Introduction

Lecture 46 Problem Solutions 1-12

Lecture 47 Problem Solutions 13-25

Lecture 48 Problem Solutions 26-42

Lecture 49 Problem Solutions 43-58

Lecture 50 Problem Solutions 59-73

Students wanting to learn more about AC circuits