How does a capacitor store electric charge?

📌 CONCEPT: A capacitor stores electric charge by accumulating it on its plates when connected to a potential difference, allowing it to act as a reservoir for charge.

📐 RULE / FORMULA: The charge stored on a capacitor can be calculated using the formula Q = CV, where Q is the charge, C is the capacitance, and V is the potential difference across the capacitor.

💡 WORKED EXAMPLE: Given a 2 μF capacitor connected to a 12 V battery, we can calculate the charge stored using the formula: Q = 2 μF * 12 V = 24 μC. This means the capacitor stores 24 microcoulombs of electric charge on its plates.

⚠️ COMMON MISTAKE: Students often forget to convert the capacitance from microfarads to farads or vice versa before plugging in the values into the formula, leading to incorrect results.