What does increasing the surface area of the internal plates of a capacitor do?

Increasing the surface area of the internal plates of a capacitor directly increases its capacitance. Capacitance is defined as the ability of a capacitor to store electrical charge, and it is influenced by several factors including the surface area of the plates, the distance between them, and the dielectric material used.

When the surface area of the plates is increased, there is more area available to accumulate electric charges, which allows the capacitor to store more energy for a given voltage. This relationship can be quantified using the formula for capacitance, which states that capacitance (C) is proportional to the surface area (A) of the plates. Specifically, the equation is expressed as:

[ C = \frac{\varepsilon \cdot A}{d} ]

where ( \varepsilon ) is the permittivity of the dielectric material between the plates, ( A ) is the surface area, and ( d ) is the distance between the plates. Thus, with a larger surface area, the capacitance increases, allowing for greater energy storage.

The other options relate to different electrical properties that do not correlate directly with the change in surface area of a capacitor's plates. For instance, resistance is not inherently affected by the plate area in this context