What makes a good ammeter

It uses an analog to digital converter ADC to measure the voltage across the shunt resistor. The ADC is read by a microcomputer that performs the calculations to display the current through the resistor. One problem with ammeters is the need for these meters to be inserted into the circuit and become part of it.

Be warned: an ammeter connected in series or connected in parallel with a electrical circuit will probably blow the fuse, which can possibly damage the ammeter and cause injury. An ideal ammeter has zero resistance so that the the circuit in which it has been placed is not disturbed. An ideal ammeter is a short circuit. However, as with the voltmeter, no ammeter can ever be ideal, and therefore all ammeters have some hopefully small internal shunt resistance.

Mistakenly placing ammeters in parallel with a circuit will blow the fuse, possibly damaging the ammeter, causing a voltage drop and causing injury. However, as with the voltmeter, no ammeter can ever be ideal, and therefore all ammeters have some hopefully small internal resistance. This well-illustrated e-book, coupled with some basic knowledge of electricity, will give you a broad theoretical background in this fundamental subject.

What Do Ammeters Measure? An Ammeter is a measuring device that is used to measure the flow of electricity in the form of current in a circuit. Share it:. Inserting ammeter in a circuit always increase the resistance of the circuit and therefore reduces the current in the circuit. What is the effective resistance of your ammeter?

Theoretically an ideal ammeter has zero resistance, so that if you were to connect a voltage source directly to it, the only thing that would limit the current through the ammeter is the internal resistance of the source.

What do you mean by resistance? Resistance is the opposition that a substance offers to the flow of electric current. When an electric current of one ampere passes through a component across which a potential difference voltage of one volt exists, then the resistance of that component is one ohm. Do voltmeters have resistance? On the other hand, a voltmeter measures the voltage difference between two different points say, on different sides of a resistor , but it should not change the amount of current going through the element between those two points.

So, it should have very high resistance so that it doesn't "draw" current through it. Is the ammeter connected correctly? An ammeter is connected in series with the circuit to be measured. The ideal ammeter will have zero resistance so as not to disturb the circuit. We will find the shunt as part of the ammeter circuit. Kirchhoff's current law. Kirchhoff's voltage law. Voltmeters and Ammeters. Electrolytic conductivity. Next lesson. Current timeTotal duration Google Classroom Facebook Twitter.

Video transcript - [Voiceover] Let's say you have a circuit here and you had a battery with a voltage v and there were resistors one, resistor two, and resistor three up here, and there was current flowing through here. What if you wanted to experimentally measure the voltage across some of these elements? You'd have to use a voltmeter. Voltmeter looks like this. So a circle with a v in it is the symbol we use for a voltmeter. How do you use it? You take that voltmeter, you bring it over to here.

I can't plug it in the circuit like that. What I do is I take the leads of the voltmeter and I just connect them to either side of the circuit element that I want to determine the voltage across.

So if I do this and I connect those leads right here, this voltmeter will tell me the voltage across R three. Or take the voltmeter, put it over here, and if I connect the leads across R one in parallel, notice I'm hooking up the voltmeter in parallel. Voltmeters you always hook up in parallel. This now will tell me the voltage across R one and if I wanted to make sure my battery was functioning correctly, I could take my voltmeter and I can hook up the leads across the positive and negative terminals of the battery and see if the voltage across the battery is what I think it is.

That's how you use a voltmeter: always hooked up in parallel. But if I wanted to measure the current, I don't use a voltmeter, I use an ammeter. And for an ammeter you do not hook up an ammeter in parallel with the element you're trying to measure. You will probably blow out the ammeter.

I've done it a few times. It's embarrassing. Don't hook up the ammeter in parallel, tell you why in a minute. But what you have to do is hook it up in series. So if I wanted to know the current going through R three, I could just stick the ammeter right in here.

One lead would plug into one side of the ammeter, the other lead would plug into the other side. If it never goes to positive, something is amiss. The ammeter is connected in series with the circuit. So its reading will show the value of the current flowing in the circuit. Hence, the reading of the ammeter is equal to 1A. Should an ammeter have? Asked by: Javier Schaefer. What does the ammeter indicate? What is the resistance of ideal ammeter? Why do we use an ammeter instead of a Milliammeter?

What happens if you connect an ammeter in parallel? Why voltmeter has high resistance and ammeter has low resistance? Do voltmeter has high resistance? Why the ammeter is connected in series? Is ammeter high resistance? Do ammeters have resistance? What is the function of ammeter? How does the ammeter work? What does an ammeter do in a circuit?