Suntan Capacitance
This is a measure of a capacitor's ability to store charge. A large capacitance means that more charge can be stored. Capacitance is measured in farads, symbol F. However 1F is very large, so prefixes are used to show the smaller values.
Three prefixes (multipliers) are used, µ (micro), n (nano) and p (pico):
µ means 10-6 (millionth), so 1000000µF = 1F
n means 10-9 (thousand-millionth), so 1000nF = 1µF
p means 10-12 (million-millionth), so 1000pF = 1nF
Capacitor values can be very difficult to find because there are many types of capacitor with different labelling systems!
There are many types of capacitor but they can be split into two groups, polarised and unpolarised. Each group has its own circuit symbol.
