Dielectrics

So, you know how magnets attract things, right? Well, some materials like glass or rubber don’t stick to magnets and these are called insulators.

Now, imagine we took one of these insulator materials and put it in between two metal plates (like a sandwich). This insulating material is called a dielectric.

When we apply electricity to the metal plates, the electrons moving back and forth make a field of energy around the plates. This field of energy is what we call electric field.

Now, the dielectric material in between the metal plates is special because it can actually be affected by this electric field. The dielectric absorbs some of the energy from this field and tries to store it, but at the same time pushes back against the electric field.

This push-back force is what we call “dielectric strength”.

All of these properties of a dielectric make it really useful in electronics. For example, capacitors are a type of device that uses a dielectric material to store energy.

So, in simple words, dielectrics are materials that don’t conduct electricity well but can store some of the energy from an electric field, and capacitors use dielectric material to store energy.