I am trying to understand a vintage circuit diagram (70s) and came across this symbol of a capacitor with an arrow. Is this a bi-polar capacitor? Why show an arrow?
Electronic – Help Identifying Vintage Capacitor Symbol
capacitordiagramsymbol [~]
Related Solutions
It's an electrolytic capacitor. These are polarized, as the + sign also indicates. This is a less common symbol. Below are the more common ones, European on the left, American on the right.
Compare to the symbol for a non-polarized capacitor:
Note: I think the American symbol for a non-polarized cap is a bad one; it suggests that there is some kind of asymmetry where in reality there isn't one.
edit
From the comments it appears that the supposedly American non-polarized symbol is less common than I thought. I can only speak from my experience, and like I also said in comment, it could be that I've been looking mostly at older schematics (not the tubes, I'm not that old).
I found this schematic within a minute:
C2 might be an electrolytic (it won't be, will have a too low capacitance), but look at variable capacitor C1.
Also this page.
edit 2
Browsing through more symbols encountered also this weirdo (the one on the right):
- capacitor 680 kilo-pico-Farad (kpF) same as 680nF
- Capacitor 5uF 6Volt.
- 100k ohm potentiometer
- 22k ohm trimer potentiometer
All capacitors marked k are in kpF which is the same as nF The line inside the resistors means that those are thin film resistors either carbon or metal.
This is a NPN BJT based circuit, GND is connected to the positive of the battery and negative terminal is marked + but GND should be negative despite teh battery symbol being wrong.
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Best Answer
That's a 10 nF capacitor. The triangle is not a standard symbol. It may correspond to a footnote on the schematic. Or, it is possibly be a voltage range classification, construction type, etc. If so, that would be listed in the corner of the schematic someplace too.
Just use common sense to determine the voltage and other requirements. You don't show what is connected to the left of the cap. The cap may need to be X or Y rated if it touches the power line. However, since the right side of the diodes are at less than 63 V, this cap probably does not touch the power line. It is probably being fed from the secondary of a transformer.