This solar panel also produces DC, we can see it produces a flat line at around 4V on the multimeter. So, if I measure this battery, we see a flat line in the positive region at around 1.5V so this is DC electricity. In DC electricity the voltage is constant and in the positive region, the electrons do not reverse they all flow in just one direction. The peak voltage of each electrical system is therefore as follows. The voltage is lower in the north American system at 120V where as it’s 230-240V in the rest of the world. The frequency is measured in Hertz but this just means the sine wave is repeating 60 times per second in the north American electrical systems and 50 times per second in the rest of the world. Notice that the British and European outlets are 230V, the Australian is 240V but all three are at a frequency of 50 Hz, however the north American outlet reads 120V at a frequency of 60Hz. This multimeter shows basic wave forms and when I connect to any of these between the phase and neutral, we see a sine wave, indicting it is AC electricity. To find the RMS voltage we divide the peak voltage by 0.707.įor example here I have a North American, British, Australian and European power outlet. To find the peak voltage, we multiply the RMS voltage by the square root of 2 which is roughly 1.41. That is what our multimeters calculate when we connect them to the electrical outlets. That’s not very useful, so a clever engineer decided to use the root mean squared voltage. If we took the average of these values we get zero volts. This example reaches 170V at its peaks, so if we plotted these values we have positive and negative peaks of 170V. The voltage changes between a peak positive and peak negative value as the maximum intensity of the magnetic field passes the coils of wire. If we plotted this, we get a sine wave pattern. This is therefore changing between positive and negative values as it flows forwards and backwards, the voltage is not constant, even though the multimeter makes it look like it is. That’s because there’s a magnetic field in the AC generator which essentially pushes and pulls the electrons in the wires. In AC electricity the voltage and current constantly change direction between forwards and backwards. Notice it also states 50-60 Hz, this is the AC frequency and we’ll look at that in just a moment. It will then output 19.5V of DC electricity and 3.33 Amps of current. In this example it states it needs an input of between 100 and 240V, with the symbol for AC electricity, and it will draw 1.5Amps of current. If you look at the power adapter for your laptop and electronic devices, the manufacturers label tells you it’s converting AC to DC. Why is that important? Because the power outlets in our homes provide AC but our electronic devices use DC, so we need to convert the AC into DC electricity.įor example, a laptop charger takes AC from the power outlet and convers this to DC to power the laptop. The full bridge rectifier converts AC alternating current, into DC direct current. This is showing that AC electricity is the input and DC electricity is the output. The arrow points in the direction of conventional current. We typically find them represented on engineering drawings like this. They are usually aligned in a Dimond configuration, but they can also be aligned in other ways such as these. What is a Full Bridge Rectifierįull bridge rectifiers look like this, there are many shapes and sizes but they essentially consist of 4 diodes in a certain arrangement. It’s used to power our electronic circuits, so we’re going to learn in detail how they work in this article.Įlectricity is dangerous and can be fatal, you must be qualified and competent to carry out any electrical work. Scroll to the bottom to watch the YouTube tutorial. Learn about the full wave bridge rectifier, the half wave rectifier the full wave rectifier, center tapped transformers, diodes, load, oscilloscope, waveform, DC, AC, voltage current, capacitors, bleeder resistor to learn how full wave bridge rectifiers work.
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