A capacitor is made of a flat plate of area and a second plate having a stair-like structure as shown in figure. If the area of each stair is and the height is , the capacitance of the arrangement i

Question

A capacitor is made of a flat plate of area  and a second plate having a stair-like structure as shown in figure. If the area of each stair is  and the height is , the capacitance of the arrangement is:

Canvas Classes · Accepted Answer

🧠 Stair Capacitor = Three Parallel Capacitors

Look at the diagram. The bottom plate is flat (area ). The top plate has three steps, each of area , sitting at heights , ,  above the flat plate. The natural mistake is to treat this as one capacitor with some "average" gap. Don't.

The right way to read this picture: each stair, together with the part of the flat plate directly below it, forms an independent parallel-plate capacitor with its own gap. All three of these mini-capacitors share the s

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