Capacitor Kit Identification Guide

Contributors: Byron J.

Clever Applications

Crystal Oscillators

The kit specifically includes 22 pF ceramic caps for building cyrstal oscillators, commonly required by microcontroller ICs.

Value Combinations

This kit offers a wide array of values, but the decade-by-decade selection leaves some gaps in between. There are a couple of tricks that can be used to bridge those gaps, by combining caps in series or parallel.

Parallel

The values of capacitors wired in parallel are added together. You can gang up smaller caps to effectively form a larger cap.

Series

Capacitors wired in series combine in an inverse sum -- take the reciprocal of each value, and add them together, then take the reciprocal of that sum.

Restated as a simplified guidelines while you're at your workbench:

• If you want half the value of a cap in the kit, put two of that value in series.
• If you want double the value of a cap in the kit, put two in parallel.