Experiment 12 from my beginners book Make: More electronics is instructing me to build the following circuit..... I apologize for posting the whole circuit when my question has to do with just a small part of the circuit but I felt that if I didn’t post the whole circuit I would not be able to provide the whole context of my question.
In case it helps with the process of understanding the circuit below, the circuit is supposed to function as a microphone amplifier consisting of a pre-amplifier (LM741) and a power amplifier (LM386):
My question has to do with the 10 microfarad capacitor connected to the output of the LM741. The way I see it is that there are two scenarios occurring in this capacitor.
Scenario 1: When the LM741 output voltage goes from a set value to a more positive value electrons flow into the LM741 energizing the capacitor as show in the image below:
Scenario 2: When the LM741 output voltage goes from a set value to a more negative value electrons flow out of the LM741 de-energizing the capacitor as shown it the image below:
I think I am ok with Scenario 1 since it makes sense in my head (given my current level of understanding) that electrons will happily move to a point of higher potential.
However, Scenario 2 has me very confused because I don’t see how that works. The reasons I say this is because I don’t see where the electrons go as they are being pushed out of the coupling capacitor. The way I see it is that they can’t go to the negative terminal because there is no potential difference to make them want to go that way. So it looks to me like they are pushed through other wires connected to the negative terminal but that would cause all kinds of unexpected issues right?
Could someone please help me get a better grip on what is actually happening with this 10 microfarad capacitor as the output voltage of the LM741 swings up and down?