Skip to content

Physics · Ch 13 — AC Circuits

Average Value of AC

13.3.1

Average Value of AC

The average (or mean) value of an alternating current or voltage over a FULL cycle is always exactly zero: for every instant where sin⁡ωt\sin\omega t takes some positive value, there is a corresponding instant exactly half a cycle later where it takes the exact same negative value, so the positive and negative contributions cancel perfectly over one complete cycle. This makes the full-cycle average physically useless as a single descriptive number for AC. …