An RC circuit consists of a resistor and capacitor connected in series. When charged, a capacitor will discharge through the resistor over time. A resistor controls the rate of charging and discharging, with higher resistance leading to slower charging. RC circuits can be used as filters, with high-pass filters passing higher frequencies and low-pass filters passing lower frequencies. The transient response of an RC circuit depends on the relative time constant and input signal period, resulting in either a triangular output for an integrator or spiked output for a differentiator.