Abstract
An important property of oscillating systems like RLC circuits is the Q factor, which quantifies the strength of damping in the system. The Q factor is inversely proportional to the resistance for a series RLC circuit but increases with the resistance in a parallel RLC circuit. The surprising behavior of the parallel RLC circuit makes building and modeling this circuit an interesting project for a student laboratory. We describe an experiment that has been performed to explore this topic, share an example of the results that can be obtained, and suggest analyses that students might perform.