So, the other day I was playing around with some coils.

As I was measuring the coil capacitance I noticed when I placed my hand near the coil the capacitance actually increased by several pF, hen when I moved my hand away it decreased by the same amount...why is this?

 

How were you measuring coil capacitance?

 

With a high freq capacitance meter....Which I know is not typically how you measure capacitance of a coil, but the interesting this is that it was very close to what was calculated.

 

why is this?

Body capacitance in parallel with coil capacitance?

 

Permittivity ε. Your hand has more permittivity than the air.