Need a reminder to hook your capacitors up correctly? Try watching this video by Dave of EEVblog, exploding capacitors in high speed. Taking advantage of his new high speed camera, he filmed the thermal breakdown caused by reverse biasing on a number of different types of polarized capacitors. Neat effect,, but certainly not something I would want to happen next to a freshly designed circuit board.
6 thoughts on “Exploding capacitors in high speed”
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I like to imagine what it was like when our 220V capacitor for our 1/4 HP well water pump exploded.
Mythbusters, anyone?
The first circuit I ever built was a high-power audio amplifier. After breadboarding the thing up, I turned on power (+/-35V) and the thing didn’t work. I scratched my head a bit, and then started to put my head over the circuit to take a closer look. *** BOOM *** The supply capacitor blew up in my face as I wired them in backwards.
Thankfully I was not injured, and it was this experience that let me to pursue a degree in electrical engineering.
Yeah, it’s dangerous being an engineer! Glad you survived unscathed.