In electrical and electronic systems, reactance is the opposition of a circuit element to a change in current or voltage, due to that element's inductance or capacitance. A built-up electric field resists the change of voltage on the element, while a magnetic field resists the change of current. The notion of reactance is similar to electrical resistance, but it differs in several respects. In phasor analysis, reactance is used to compute amplitude and phase changes of sinusoidal alternating current going through a circuit element. It is denoted by the symbol . An ideal resistor has zero reactance, whereas ideal inductors and capacitors have zero resistance – that is, respond to current only by reactance. The magnitude of the reactance of an inductor rises in proportion to a rise in frequency, while the magnitude of the reactance of a capacitor decreases in proportion to a rise in frequency (or increases in proportion to wavelength). As frequency goes up, inductive reactance goes up and capacitive reactance goes down.

Read full article on Wikipedia · CC-BY-SA