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Q&A Role of C2 (bypass capacitor)

Is C2 here to protect the voltage source from thermal noise? There's absolutely no chance that any level of thermal noise produced by a resistor will be sufficient to cause any reasonably desi...

posted 11mo ago by Andy aka‭  ·  edited 11mo ago by Andy aka‭

Answer
#2: Post edited by user avatar Andy aka‭ · 2023-05-10T12:00:31Z (11 months ago)
  • > _Is C2 here to protect the voltage source from thermal noise?_
  • There's absolutely no chance that any level of thermal noise produced by a resistor will be sufficient to cause any reasonably designed power supply (voltage source) any problems whatsoever. Even badly designed power supplies will cope with this easily.
  • For instance if R1+R2 was 1 M&ohm; and they were heated up to 200 &deg;C, the open circuit noise they would produce is 161 &mu;V. That's a piddling amount of noise and power.
  • Also, consider this; a power supply is a practical voltage source and, will almost certainly have several to hundreds or thousands of micro-farads of capacitance already across its output terminals so, what do you think the presence of another capacitor is going to bring to the party?
  • > _Is C2 here to protect the voltage source from thermal noise?_
  • There's absolutely no chance that any level of thermal noise produced by a resistor will be sufficient to cause any reasonably designed power supply (voltage source) any problems whatsoever. Even badly designed power supplies will cope with this easily.
  • For instance if R1+R2 was 1 M&ohm; and they were heated up to 200 &deg;C, the open circuit noise they would produce is 161 &mu;V. That's a piddling amount of noise and power.
  • Also, consider this; a power supply is a practical voltage source and, will almost certainly have several, to hundreds, or thousands of micro-farads of capacitance already across its output terminals so, what do you think the presence of another capacitor is going to bring to the party?
#1: Initial revision by user avatar Andy aka‭ · 2023-05-10T11:59:33Z (11 months ago)
 > _Is C2 here to protect the voltage source from thermal noise?_

There's absolutely no chance that any level of thermal noise produced by a resistor will be sufficient to cause any reasonably designed power supply (voltage source) any problems whatsoever. Even badly designed power supplies will cope with this easily.

For instance if R1+R2 was 1 M&ohm; and they were heated up to 200 &deg;C, the open circuit noise they would produce is 161 &mu;V. That's a piddling amount of noise and power.

Also, consider this; a power supply is a practical voltage source and, will almost certainly have several to hundreds or thousands of micro-farads of capacitance already across its output terminals so, what do you think the presence of another capacitor is going to bring to the party?