Some not so useful useful but cool sounding and true analogies I have used during my office hours while teaching undergrads about circuits:
Charging a capacitor is like falling out of an airplane.
“Charging” an inductor is like a bunch of uranium decaying.
A circuit with an inductor and a capacitor is like a pendulum.
A circuit with an inductor, capacitor, and resistor is like a pendulum in oil.
A circuit with an inductor, capacitor, resistor and AC power source is like pushing a kid on a swing.
3 responses so far ↓
Traums // November 26, 2008 at 3:50 am
A circuit with an inductor, capacitor, resistor, AC power source and a noise generator is bad for your grades ^_,^
Joshua // November 30, 2008 at 3:51 pm
So what’s the analogy for a circuit with an inductor, capacitor, and memristor?
Eric // December 4, 2008 at 2:35 pm
I tend to prefer a mass attached to a spring slidiing a frictionless surface for the RC circuit analogy. Somehow the inductance/mass and capacitance/spring constant analogies seem more intuitive to me than inductance/length of string and capacitance/g. I suppose it makes adding a resistor a bit harder, since the idea of a velocity dependent frictional force is likely to be pretty foreign to them, but nicer for the basic one in my mind.