Qualitative Analysis of the Differentiator and Integrator Circuits

M. Nayga, K.K. Seroje* National Institute of Physics, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City 1101 *kingkarlseroje@nip.upd.edu.ph

Abstract
This experiment aims to investigate the excitation of mercury vapor by the energy carried by electrons. The plot of current vs. voltage was gathered using an oscilloscope. The result of this experiment signified that at specific values of energy, mercury atoms were excited to a quantized energy level. This was consistent with the quantization theory of energy levels in Mercury.

1. Introduction
Capacitors are devices used for waveform generation, filtering, and blocking and bypass applications.They have the ability to make timing circuits such as oscillators circuits that do timing operation over and over in order to set the frequency of an output wavefront. The capacitor's memory can make circuits that respond mostly to changes, called differentiatiors, or mostly to averages, called integrators.

Fig 1: The schematic diagram of a capacitor

Figure 1 shows a depiction of a capacitor. Moreover, the total charge stored in a capacitor is related by Q = CV where Q is the total charge, C is the measure of how big the capacitance is, and V is the voltage across the terminals. The goal of this experiment is to observe the behavior of the output waveforms generated by different input waveforms with varying frequencies.

2. Methodology
The following circuits below were constructed.
10 k

100pF

Vin

Vout
0.01F

Vin
100

Vout

Circuit 1

Circuit 2

Each circuit has an input voltage of 5Volts. The circuits were also given varying frequencies (100kHz and 500 kHz were mostly used) as well as different attenuators. The output waveforms of the square wave, triangular wave, and sinusoidal wave as input waveforms were observed and compared.

3. Results and Discussions

For each circuit constructed, the following results were obtained .

Fig 2: The input, actual and theoretical output of circuit 1 As observed from the result, the actual output does not differ significantly with respect to the theoretical waveform. This circuit is called a Differentiator since the output signal it produces is very similar to the mathematical function of differentiation. The output wave of this circuit is a graph of the rate of change of the input voltage. For the 2nd constructed circuit, the following result was obtained.

Fig 2: The input, actual and theoretical output of circuit 2 The output signal does not differ significantly with respect to the expected waveform except for the square wave input signal. This may be due to the inappropriate frequency of the signal produced by the wave function generator. The 2nd circuit is called an Integrator. Acting the opposite way as the differentiator circuit, the magnitude of the output signal is proportional on the length of time the input voltage is present. The longer time the input voltage is present, the greater would be the output magnitude.

4. Conclusion
Based on the results obtained from the experiment, it was concluded that the theory was verified. Though there might be some difference between the actual and theoretical output, this could not be avoided due to the old apparatus used in the setup. It was also concluded that the property of the capacitor to charge/discharge over time is also significant in many electronic applications. The two circuits, namely differentiator and integrator, greatly possess this importance. The experimenters recommend using a more accurate signal generator and oscilloscope in doing further research. Also, it is also recommended to conduct a quantitative study of this topic.

Acknowledgements
The experimenters would like to thank Ms . Aleena Laganapan for teaching us the concepts behind the Franck-Hertz experiment and the usage of the oscilloscope..

References
[1] Randy Harris, Nonclassical Physics Behind Newtons View