Why is the Farad unit so large?

Asked Jan 02 '20 at 12:54

Active Jan 02 '20 at 12:54

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I have wondered this on and off for years, and was prompted to find out the answer:

Any time I've seen capacitors, they're listed with milli- or pico-Farad ratings. I understand that, nowadays, we have special purpose supercapacitors that package "whole" Farads into single components.

But, why on earth did "they" use such a large base value that for "most" applications you'd need something in the milli- to pico- range? It just seems ... unnecessarily skewed.

asked Jan 02 '20 at 12:54

KlaymenDK

2

Like most modern units, farad is defined based on SI base units. It's 1F = 1 As/V. That's it. Nothing to answer here. – Marcus Müller Jan 02 '20 at 12:57
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Duplicate of [Why is the unit for capacitance so large?](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/72326/why-is-the-unit-for-capacitance-so-large) – Tom Carpenter Jan 02 '20 at 13:00
Same question could be posed regarding mass, which is already 'compensated' by the standard prefix kilo... – Huisman Jan 02 '20 at 13:02
@Huisman but that's a base unit, and thus so defined. You'll notice that, for example, J is well definable with respect to kg without any further prefixes. Nice, isn't it? – Marcus Müller Jan 02 '20 at 13:52
because it's based on 1 second. – Tony Stewart EE75 Jan 02 '20 at 13:59

Why is the Farad unit so large?

0 Answers0