A capacitor is a discrete electrical circuit component typically made of a dielectric placed between conductors. One lumped element model of a capacitor includes a lossless ideal capacitor in series with a resistor termed the equivalent series resistance (ESR), as shown in the figure below. The ESR represents losses in the capacitor. In a low-loss capacitor the ESR is very small (the conduction is high leading to a low resistivity), and in a lossy capacitor the ESR can be large. Note that the ESR is not simply the resistance that would be measured across a capacitor by an ohmmeter. The ESR is a derived quantity representing the loss due to both the dielectric's conduction electrons and the bound dipole relaxation phenomena mentioned above. In a dielectric, one of the conduction electrons or the dipole relaxation typically dominates loss in a particular dielectric and manufacturing method. For the case of the conduction electrons being the dominant loss, then