73·STUDY

General exam question G6A11

Subelement G6, CIRCUIT COMPONENTS· Group G6A

G6A11

What happens when an inductor is operated above its self-resonant frequency?

  • A.Its reactance increases
  • B.Harmonics are generated
  • C.It becomes capacitive (correct answer)
  • D.Catastrophic failure is likely

WhyAn inductor operated above its self-resonant frequency becomes capacitive. Every real inductor has some stray capacitance between its windings, and above its self-resonant frequency that stray capacitance's reactance dominates, so the component's net behavior flips from inductive to capacitive, answer C. Its reactance doesn't simply keep increasing past that point, operating above self-resonance doesn't inherently generate harmonics, and it doesn't cause catastrophic failure on its own, so A, B, and D are wrong.

Published 2026-08-28 · Last updated 2026-08-28 · Question text is verbatim from the 2023-2027 NCVEC Element 3 pool (public domain); the explanation above is original writing, see our methodology.

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