Capacitance is defined as?

• A. The amount of charge a battery can have.
• B. The energy stored in a capacitor per volt.
• C. The resistance to current flow.
• D. The electromotive force of a source.

Answer: (A)

Capacitance describes how much electric charge a capacitor can store for a given applied voltage. It is defined by the relation C = Q/V, meaning the charge stored scales linearly with the voltage across the plates, with the ratio Q/V staying constant for a capacitor with a fixed capacitance. The energy stored in a capacitor is E = 1/2 C V^2, so energy per volt isn’t a fixed property of the capacitor and depends on the voltage itself. The idea in one option about a battery’s total charge relates to a source’s capacity, not a capacitor’s ability to hold charge per volt. The other ideas—resistance to current flow and electromotive force—describe different electrical properties. So the defining concept is that capacitance is the charge stored per unit voltage, Q per V.