Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The ratio of charge to potential on an electrically charged, isolated conductor.
  • noun The ratio of the electric charge transferred from one to the other of a pair of conductors to the resulting potential difference between them.
  • noun The property of a circuit element that permits it to store charge.
  • noun The part of the circuit exhibiting capacitance.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In electricity, a term proposed for capacity reactance. See capacity of a conductor and *reactance.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun an electrical phenomenon whereby an electric charge is stored.
  • noun (Electronics) a measure of the ability of a capacitor to store electrical charge; the ratio of the charge on one plate of a capacitor to the potential difference between the plates.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun physics, uncountable The property of an electric circuit or its element that permits it to store charge, defined as the ratio of stored charge to potential over that element or circuit (Q/V); SI unit: farad (F).
  • noun physics, countable An element of an electrical circuit exhibiting capacitance.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an electrical device characterized by its capacity to store an electric charge
  • noun an electrical phenomenon whereby an electric charge is stored

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[capacit(y) + –ance.]

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Examples

  • For example, by measuring changes in an electronic property called capacitance, or the storage of electrical charge, Clark is able to obtain the microstructure's shape, stiffness, force or displacement with high accuracy and precision, he said.

    Gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine 2010

  • Of the available on-line biomass assays, the radio-frequency impedance method (often referred to as capacitance) is generally regarded as the most robust and reliable method to monitor viable biomass during fermentation and cell culture.

    GEN News Highlights 2009

  • Together with power management savings, Silicon Labs claims that consumer devices based on QuickSense will extend battery life beyond today's devices. capacitive touch-sensitive microcontrollers using what the company calls capacitance-to-digital converters.

    unknown title 2009

  • The secret to producing the gas cheaply lies in pulsing current to the submerged electrodes: Positive-going square wave pulses are gated and pulse-width controlled at frequencies carefully tuned to match the "capacitance" of the spaced-apart negative and positive plates.

    Brown's Gas ("HHO") : Clean, Cheap, and Suppressed Energy 2008

  • This does not break any existing scientific principles: When the "capacitance" of the electrodes are exceeded, there is a large release of energy similar to an over-voltaged electroytic "cap" in a circuit exploding much like a firecracker.

    Brown's Gas ("HHO") : Clean, Cheap, and Suppressed Energy 2008

  • Software of chip makers is not like firefox in a way that you just use it, but these software contains confidential parameters of the chips such as capacitance, voltage, design of the pins, package, heat flow, ...

    EDA tools on Fedora 2009

  • Software of chip makers is not like firefox in a way that you just use it, but these software contains confidential parameters of the chips such as capacitance, voltage, design of the pins, package, heat flow, ...

    Fedora People 2009

  • D4 2nd stage is only slightly longer and has a delta P ducer to establish hydrogen level rather than a capacitance probe in the tank.

    Financial Problems at Sea Launch - NASA Watch 2009

  • I understand that the entire ecosystem of open-source software is an extraordinary volunteer effort and an exemplar of non-profit capacitance, and it has not ceased to blow my mind that linux exists at all, never mind whether it fulfills my personal computing needs.

    hughstimson.org » Blog Archive » The Long Road to Linux 2009

  • I tried fashioning my own stylus for the iPod Touch a while back and due to the capacitance screen, I had to have a piece of aluminium foil running down the side of my pen that linked the tip to my fingers for the capacitance to work.

    Make A DIY iPhone Stylus For Precision, Greasy Fingers | Lifehacker Australia 2009

Comments

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  • JM gets a charge from his good old capacitance

    May 26, 2010