Hi all, I’m new to all this stuff and have been working through some tutorials that I found on the web and came across needing a 10, and 100 nF capacitors. I haven’t been able to find them anywhere. What are nF caps or could it be a misprint? Is there a substitute?
Where is a good, one place has all to buy on the web? That is cheap!
This little table should help. nF is used so that a dot doesn't have to be put into the capacitor value. When circuits get copied, etc. sometime the dot can get lost, and then the value of the cap gets lost.
For some reason, here in the U.S., we've managed to accept nano and milli as well as pico and micro for every other unit of measurement in electronics except for capacitor. Why? Here, all we use are microfarads and picofarads. Across the pond, they use nanofarads and millifarads, which is only right. Get used to the differences and go ahead and get comfortable with nanofarads and millifarads. I don't see us backward folks changing anytime soon.
For some reason, here in the U.S., we've managed to accept nano and milli as well as pico and micro for every other unit of measurement in electronics except for capacitor. Why? Here, all we use are microfarads and picofarads. Across the pond, they use nanofarads and millifarads, which is only right. Get used to the differences and go ahead and get comfortable with nanofarads and millifarads. I don't see us backward folks changing anytime soon.
I can't say we ever use millifarads over here!, basically it's not a very useful prefix for capacitors - likewise nano only ever seems to be applied to capacitors, and not anything else (although I supose it could be used for inductors as well?).
Nigel, I've seen mF used several times, mostly in power supply circuits where there might be a 1mF (vs. 1000µF) or 4.7mF (vs. 4700µF) filter caps. And I appreciate the use of millifarads. It shows consistency in the system! When I worked for Tektronix back in the 1970s and 1980s, I found that they were consistent in the inconsistent electronics world of capacitors in that they defaulted to using whole numbers by listing capacitors as 5600pF rather than 0.0056µF. I would assume that by doing that, it reduced the error of losing zeros and decimal points in the printing and reading process. However, they did NOT take it all the way to using 47,000pf vs 0.047µF. 5.6nF and 47nF sure is easier on the eyes, isn't it?