How does charge gather on both plates of the capacitor? In my textbook, it states that when a parallel-plate capacitor is connected to a battery, charge will flow from the battery onto both plates. How is this possible since current only flows from one end of the battery. Also since the plates are separated the charges don't flow from one plate to another like they normally would. For charge to flow from the battery onto both plates, wouldn't the current have to flow from both ends of the battery? Otherwise, how does this occur? Is it that electrons from one plate flow towards the battery effectively making that plate positive, while the other plate becomes negative from the buildup of the electrons from the current?
 A: This is a common question which everybody has while they first learn it, but everybody miss the fact that capacitor plates are normal conductors and have both protons and electrons, where protons are immobile. If you have previously solved numericals on capacitors, you would realise that the distant between the plates are very small.
Consider a circuit where a resistor and battery are connected. The battery basically acts as a "electron pump" sending electrons directly from negative to positive terminal. The electron flow rate(current) is determined by the value of the resistance.
In our capacitor with battery case, you are actually arguing that there is a gap between the "air(or just vaccum) filled capacitor plates" which provides humongous resistance to the current, hence it makes us think that there is no way for the charge to reach the other plate(in fact it is!!).
But, when the electrons touch one the plates, the plate loses it's net neutrality and becomes negatively charged. Since the other plate is close to the first one, the electrons from the other plate is repelled and the postive terminal of the battery picks up the repelled electrons. You could see that on the whole, one plate recieved negative charge and other recieved the same amount of positive charge(protons still remain in the second plate whereas the electrons on it are left to the positive terminal).
You could now realize that it creates an illusion that actually charge has been travelled to the other plate. But in fact it is the strong electric field which repels the electrons on the second plate.
This is the most fundamental idea behind working of capacitor, you could easily do the aftermath for differnet cases if you know this fundamental idea.
A: When current flows into a capacitor, the charges get "stuck" on the plates because they can't get past the empty space between the plates directly. Even if dielectric is present,there is gap between plates and dielectric (although very small). Electrons - negatively charged particles - are sucked into one of the plates, and it becomes overall negatively charged. The large mass of negative charges on one plate pushes away like charges on the other plate, making it positively charged.
