A Description of Alternating Current Free Essay Example

Abstract

Alternating current (AC) electricity is the type of electricity that commonly used in houses and businesses throughout the world. While direct current (DC) electricity is flowing in one direction through a wire, the direction of the AC is moving in a back-and-forth motion. AC electricity is created by an AC electric generator, which is determining the frequency. The special about AC electricity is the voltage can be readily changed, so that will make it more suitable for long-distance transmission than DC electricity.

However, AC can employ capacitors and inductors in electronic circuitry that will allow for a wide range of applications. This experiment was amid to create signals for AC voltage using function generator, measuring the signals using oscilloscope, determining the RMS value of AC signals, analyze the effect of frequency, offset and peak voltage on its value.

This report will contain the following parts: Abstract, introduction, instrumentation and procedure, results and discussion, error analysis, conclusion and appendix. The abstract summarized the whole experiment.

While the instrumentation shows all the instruments which were used in the experiment. The procedure and results parts, shows the experimental methods used and the results that were found out. These results were compared with the theoretical values in the two procedures, then it had been discussed in the discussion section in order to notice the error causes and mention it in the error analysis part. The conclusion shows the results carried out and define the main problems/issues that faced the group while working. Also, there will be a figures and tables in the appendix part.

Introduction

In AC, the movement of electric charge periodically reverses direction and it forms in which electric power is delivered to businesses and residences. The usual waveform of an AC power circuit is a sine wave. In certain applications, there are different waveforms are used, which is triangular or square waves. The audio and radio signals carried on electrical wires are also examples of AC. The most important goal in these applications is recovering of information encodes (or modulates) onto the AC signal.

In the first experiment, it’s creating an AC then measures it using a function generator and digital oscilloscope.

The signal is originally produced in a power station and then is sent through transformers and power lines to the houses. In the laboratory, signals are produced and transported on a smaller scale using the equipment and cables. Specifically, the function generator is using to create AC signals, cables connect equipment together to transport the generated signal, and the oscilloscope is used to display and measure the signal.

Before starting the experiment there are some main points to understand: Amplitude is the maximum voltage reached by the signal.
It is measured in volts, V.

Peak voltage is another name for amplitude.
Peak-peak voltage is twice the peak voltage (amplitude). When reading an oscilloscope trace it is usual to measure peak-peak voltage. Time period is the time taken for the signal to complete one cycle. It is measured in seconds (s), but time periods tend to be short so milliseconds (ms) and microseconds (µs) are often used. 1ms = 0.001s and 1µs = 0.000001s. Frequency is the number of cycles per second.

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