Word: capacitor
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...three attempts, its systems control light went red-meaning that the elaborate three-stage bird was unable or unsafe to fire. First it was a failure of a nozzle-control unit, then a glitch in a fail-safe arming circuit, then a guidance failure traced to a tiny capacitor...
...modern radar. But they are the bane of many an electronics engineer. Sometimes the high-frequency currents that are crammed into a pulse swirl through a simple resistance as if it were also a small coil (inductance); sometimes the pulses treat the resistance as if it were a capacitor. Either way, coil or capacitor, those unwanted effects introduce annoying problems...
...home washing machine and using no more current than an electric range - has no moving parts at all. Its essential part is a coil of heavy wire that can take var ious shapes, including a cylinder, a doughnut or a flat disk. When a massive electric current from a capacitor is shot suddenly through a coil, it creates an intense magnetic field in the space around it. If a piece of metal is near by, the magnetism starts currents flowing in the metal. These currents are surrounded by their own magnetism, and repulsion between the two fields drives the metal...
...turn controls the high current needed by the coil. Manufacturers claim that such systems save fuel, give more fire power, make both points and plugs work indefinitely at top efficiency at any speed. An even more rewarding system produced by New Jersey's Motion Inc. includes a capacitor that is charged by the high-tension current that is normally fed directly from coil to spark plugs. The capacitor delivers a short hot spark even when a feeble battery is painfully trying to start a cold engine in zero weather...
...plasma* which responds instantly to magnetic forces, thus permitting its particles to be accelerated to extremely high speeds. At the heart of the engine are two aluminum electrodes, 8 in. in diameter and about 1 in. apart. The electrodes are connected to a charged, 3,000-volt capacitor, but as long as the gap between them is a high vacuum (the engine works only in the vacuum of space), no spark of electricity can arc across. Every second or so, when a small amount of nitrogen gas is allowed to leak into the gap, a spark flashes, turning the nitrogen...