A Beginners Guide to Blowing Up Capacitors

A Beginners Guide to Blowing Up Capacitors

    For beginners just learning electronics, this is a great fun project to learn about what can happen to capacitors.  This project can be slightly dangerous, but it teaches you what can happen in extreme situations to capacitors.  Its also just a cool project to do.  I did it on my own, and took a video of it:

What You Need:

-Electrolytic Capacitors:   Its best to use a small low uF and low voltage capacitor.  The capacitor I used was .1uF and 10 volts, which worked perfectly.  I would recommend using a capacitor that can take less the 10 volts and less then 1uF.  Other ranges might work too, but it might be harder to do.

-Two leads to connect to the capacitor:  The best leads would be leads with alligator clips, but i used plain old wires.  They work well to, it is just a bit of a pain to connect them to the capacitors if they don't have alligator clips.

These would work great:Alligator Clip Leads

-A Variable Voltage Power supply: The power supply I used could go from low voltage all the way up to 30 volts.  I think you need at least 20 volts to explode a 10v capacitor.  Amperage matters less, but my power supply went from low amps all the way to 2 Amps.  Be careful with amps like this!!

-Safety Glasses: You need safety glasses for this project!!  Bits of plastic go flying and it makes a lot of eye irritating smoke.  It can be a pain to wear safety glasses, but you definitely want to save your eyes!!  Wear them throughout the entire project.

How To Do It

Step 1:  Connect the leads to both sides of the capacitors.  Connect one lead to one lead of the capacitor, and the other lead to the other side of the capacitor.

Step 2:  Connect the leads to the power supply.  First make sure that the power supply is off, then connect the leads to the power supply.  Connect the lead from the negative side of the capacitor(The side with the grey stripe on it) to the negative(Black) port of the power supply.

Step 3:  Put the power supply on 5 volts and low amps.  Then slowly start cranking up the voltage, but don't exceed 50V.  If it doesn't explode at 50V, start cranking up the amps until it does.

Step 4: Watch it explode!!  It should first start crackling or smoking, then  it should explode with a satisfying pop and amount of smoke.  If it doesn't blow up, try switching the capacitor leads around.  If that still doesn't work, get a different capacitor.