I'm currently taking an engineering degree at an Aussie university, and one of the units is a basic introduction to electronic systems. We have an assignment due on Thursday, and I'm not certain about one of the questions, I was hoping some of you might be able to point me in the right direction?
I think it goes as follows (hopefully an expert will correct me if I'm wrong):
Imagine for a moment that only the inductor is present (ignore the resistor for the time being).
You can write down the reactance of the inductor as a function of frequency using the standard formula. The reactance will be zero at DC and will increase towards infinity as the frequency increases.
Now do the same thing for the capacitor alone in the circuit. For the capacitor the reactance will be infinite at DC and will decrease towards zero as the frequency increases.
Next, put the inductor and capacitor in parallel. You will now have a combined impedance from the parallel components that is zero at DC and zero at infinite frequency. At some frequency in the middle the combined reactance will rise to a maximum. This is where resonance occurs.
If you differentiate the parallel reactance formula with frequency and set the slope to zero you will find the resonant frequency.
Adding the resistor changes things slightly, but not much. Now you have to deal with impedance instead of pure reactance, but following the same principles. Write down an expression for the combined impedance of the system and differentiate it to find the frequency where it is at a maximum.