Most capacitors are in the µF, nF and pF range. I know there are some special ones that go that high, but at the time faraday was around, and the unit was named after him, they didn't have such a thing. Why is the unit so large if we rarely use caps with that high of a value?
Answer
As others have mentioned, 1 farad is 1 coulomb per 1 volt. But the rabbit hole goes deeper -- the question then becomes why is 1 coulomb what it is, and why is 1 volt what it is?
Following this rabbit hole to the bottom will eventually lead us to the 7 base SI units, which are units of measure for the 7 physical attributes of our world: distance, mass, time, electric current, thermodynamic temperature, amount of a substance, and luminar intensity. They're like axioms in mathematics. From here, other units are defined in terms of these. So volt = (kilogram meter meter) / (ampere second second second). Meanwhile coulomb = ampere * second. You'll notice that 1 of a derived unit is expressed in terms of 1's of a base units.
So ultimately, 1 farad is so large because the base units are so large, at least relative to the sizes of electronic components nowadays where we fit billions of transistors onto several square millimeters.
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