Imaginary AC Circuits Aren’t Really Complex
If you have ever read advanced textbooks or papers about electronics, you may have been surprised to see the use of complex numbers used in the analysis of AC circuits. A complex number has two parts: a real part and an imaginary part. I’ve often thought that a lot of books and classes just kind of gloss over what this really means. What part of electricity is imaginary? Why do we do this?
The short answer is phase angle: the time delay between a voltage and a current in a circuit. How can an angle be a time? That’s part …read more
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