system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How capacitors work

I have a pretty good understanding of DC power, this just always confused me.
gpt
First you have to think about the fact that "current" basically means that negative charges are moving one way through a wire, and positive charges are moving the other way. A capacitor is basically two conducting plates with an "insulator" between them called a dielectric. The reason it is called a dielectric and not just a insulator is because it has special electromagnetic properties where it blocks the flow of current, but it allows an electrics field to pass through it. So what happens is, the dielectric material will block the charges from passing through it. This is sort of like a traffic jam, and negative charges will all start building up on one plate, and all the positive charges that are moving the other way will start building up on the other. There will be no current passing through the dielectric, but because there is a large difference in the charge of the plates (one is largely positive and the other is largely negative) there will be an electric field in the dielectric (which means there will be a voltage across it).