When capacitors are connected in series, what happens to capacitance?

When capacitors are connected in series, the overall capacitance of the combination decreases. This is due to the way charges distribute themselves across capacitors in series. Each capacitor in the series setup can only hold a certain amount of charge at a given voltage, and the total voltage across the series combination is the sum of the voltages across each individual capacitor.

For capacitors connected in series, the formula used to calculate the total capacitance ( C_{total} ) is:

[

\frac{1}{C_{total}} = \frac{1}{C_1} + \frac{1}{C_2} + \frac{1}{C_3} + \ldots

]

This means that as the number of capacitors increases, the overall capacitance decreases, leading to a lower capacitance value than any of the individual capacitors in the series. This behavior differs from resistors in series, where the total resistance increases. Therefore, the correct answer is that the overall capacitance decreases when capacitors are connected in series.