A power supply is a hardware component that supplies power to an electrical device.

It receives power from an electrical outlet and converts the current from AC (alternating current) to DC (direct current), which is what the computer requires. It also regulates the voltage to an adequate amount, which allows the computer to run smoothly without overheating. The power supply an integral part of any computer and must function correctly for the rest of the components to work. You can locate the power supply on a system unit by simply finding the input where the power cord is plugged in. Without opening your computer, this is typically the only part of the power supply you will see. If you were to remove the power supply, it would look like a metal box with a fan inside and some cables attached to it. Of course, you should never have to remove the power supply, so it's best to leave it in the case. While most computers have internal power supplies, many electronic devices use external ones. For example, some monitors and external hard drives have power supplies that reside outside the main unit. These power supplies are connected directly to the cable that plugs into the wall. They often include another cable that connects the device to the power supply. Some power supplies, often called "AC adaptors," are connected directly to the plug (which can make them difficult to plug in where space is limited). Both of these designs allow the main device to be smaller or sleeker by moving the power supply outside the unit. Since the power supply is the first place an electronic device receives electricity, it is also the most vulnerable to power surges and spikes. Therefore, power supplies are designed to handle fluctuations in electrical current and still provide a regulated or consistent power output. Some include fuses that will blow if the surge is too great, protecting the rest of the equipment. After all, it is much cheaper to replace a power supply than an entire computer. Still, it is wise to connect all electronics to a surge protector or UPS to keep them from being damaged by electrical surges.

An ohmmeter is an electrical instrument that measures electrical resistance, the opposition to an electric current. Micro-ohmmeters (microhmmeter or microohmmeter) make low resistance measurements. Megohmmeters (aka megaohmmeter or in the case of a trademarked deviceMegger) measure large values of resistance. The unit of measurement for resistance is ohms ( ). The original design of an ohmmeter provided a small battery to apply a voltage to a resistance. It uses a galvanometer to measure the electric current through the resistance. The scale of the galvanometer was marked in ohms, because the fixed voltage from the battery assured that as resistance is decreased, the current through the meter would increase. Ohmmeters form circuits by themselves, therefore they cannot be used within an assembled circuit. A more accurate type of ohmmeter has an electronic circuit that passes a constant current (I) through the resistance, and another circuit that measures the voltage (V) across the resistance. According to the following equation, derived from Ohm's Law, the value of the resistance (R) is given by:

For high-precision measurements the above types of meter are inadequate. This is because the meter's reading is the sum of the resistance of the measuring leads, the contact resistances and the resistance being measured. To reduce this effect, a precision ohmmeter has four terminals, called Kelvin contacts. Two terminals carry the current from the meter, while the other two allow the meter to measure the voltage across the resistor. With this type of meter, any voltage drop due to the resistance of the first pair of leads and their contact resistances is ignored by the meter. This four terminal measurement technique is called Kelvin sensing, after William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, who invented the Kelvin bridge in 1861 to measure very low resistances. The Four-terminal sensing method can also be utilized to conduct accurate measurements of low resistances.

An ohmmeter is a device that measures the amount of electrical friction generated as electrons pass through an electrical conductor. Also known as electrical resistance, its value is expressed in units of ohm. This measurement is governed by Ohms Law, which states that the current passing through an electrical circuit is directly proportional to the amount of voltage exerted. When written as an algebraic equation, this natural phenomenon would look like this: R = V/I, where R is Resistance, V is Voltage, and I represents Current. This illustration of the relationship between these values is attributed to the 19th century German physicist and teacher, Georg Simon Ohm. The mechanics of how an ohmmeter works is very simple. First, an ohmmeter needs to be able to generate an internal flow of current; therefore, it comes equipped with its own battery. The device also consists of two leads, from which the resistance between them is measured. The red lead is connected to the corresponding positive terminal of theelectrical unit being tested, while the black is

attached to the negative. As the current flows from the battery and through the unit, the ohmmeter measures the drop in voltage, or resistance, that occurs.

Steps 1. 1
Disconnect completely and/or turn off all power to the circuit you are testing. You must have a completely dead wire or circuit in order to ensure accuracy in measurement, as well as your own safety. Your ohmmeter will supply the voltage and current for your circuit so NO other power is necessary. As the instructions for our Blue Point volt/ohmmeter state, testing a powered circuit can "cause damage to the meter, circuit, and *you*." Ads by Google

2. 2
Select an ohmmeter suitable for your project. Analog ohmmeters are very basic and inexpensive, and usually range from 0-10 to 0-10,000 ohms, digital devices may have similar ranges or "autorange", reading the resistance of your device or circuit and selecting the correct range automatically.

3. 3
Check the ohmmeter to see if it has a battery. If you just bought an ohmmeter, the battery may have come pre-installed in your unit, or packaged separately with instructions for installing it.

4. 4

Plug your test leads into the sockets on your meter. For multi-functional meters, you will see a "common", or negative plug, and a "positive" plug. These may also be colored red (+) and black (-).

5. 5
Zero your meter if it is equipped with a zeroing dial. Notice that the scale reads in the reverse direction of most conventional measuring scales, that is, less resistance is to the right, and more resistance is to the left. Zero resistance should be observed when your probes are connected directly to each other, and you can adjust this by holding them together and turning the "adjust" dial until the needle on the scales is at zero ohms.

6. 6
Choose the circuit or electrical device you want to test. For practice, you can use almost anything which conducts electricity, from a piece of aluminum foil to a pencil mark on a sheet of paper. To get an idea of the accuracy of your readings, buy a few different resistors from an electronics supplier, or some other device with a known resistance value.

7. 7
Touch one probe to one end of a circuit, the other to the other end, and note the reading on the instrument. If you bought a 1000 ohm resistor, you can place a probe on each conductor on the resistor, and select the 1000 or 10,000 ohm range, then read the meter to see if indeed it reads 1,000 ohms.

8. 8
Isolate components in a hard wired electrical circuit to test them individually. If you are reading the ohms on a resistor in a printed circuit board, you will have to unsolder or unpin the resistor to assure you are not getting a false reading through another path in the circuit.

9. 9
Read the resistance of a run of wire or a branch of a circuit to see if there is a short or open break in the circuit. If you read "infinite ohms", there is no path for the electrical current to follow, and in simple terms, this suggests a burned out component somewhere in the circuit, or a broken conductor. Because many circuits contain "gate" devices (transistors or semiconductors), diodes, and capacitors, however, you may not read continuity even when the complete circuit is intact, which makes it difficult to test complete circuits with only an ohmmeter.

10.

10

Turn the ohmmeter off when not in use. Occasionally the test leads will become shorted while the device is stored, draining the battery.

A voltmeter is an instrument used for measuring electrical potential difference between two points in an electric circuit. Analog voltmeters move a pointer across a scale in proportion to the voltage of the circuit; digital voltmeters give a numerical display of voltage by use of an analog to digital converter. Voltmeters are made in a wide range of styles. Instruments permanently mounted in a panel are used to monitor generators or other fixed apparatus. Portable instruments, usually equipped to also measure current and resistance in the form of a multimeter, are standard test instruments used in electrical and electronics work. Any measurement that can be converted to a voltage can be displayed on a meter that is suitably calibrated; for example, pressure, temperature, flow or level in a chemical process plant. General purpose analog voltmeters may have an accuracy of a few percent of full scale, and are used with voltages from a fraction of a volt to several thousand volts. Digital meters can be made with high accuracy, typically better than 1%. Specially calibrated test instruments have higher accuracies, with laboratory instruments capable of measuring to accuracies of a few parts per million. Meters using amplifiers can measure tiny voltages of microvolts or less. Part of the problem of making an accurate voltmeter is that of calibration to check its accuracy. In laboratories, the Weston Cell is used as a standard voltage for precision work. Precision voltage references are available based on electronic circuits.

Analog voltmeter

A moving coil galvanometer of thed'Arsonval type.

  

The red wire carries the current to be measured. The restoring spring is shown in green. N and S are the north and south poles of the magnet.

A moving coil galvanometer can be used as a voltmeter by inserting a resistor in series with the instrument. It employs a small coil of fine wire suspended in a strong magnetic field. When an electric current is applied, the galvanometer's indicator rotates and compresses a small spring. The angular rotation is proportional to the current through the coil. For use as a voltmeter, a series resistance is added so that the angular rotation becomes proportional to the applied voltage. One of the design objectives of the instrument is to disturb the circuit as little as possible and so the instrument should draw a minimum of current to operate. This is achieved by using a sensitiveammeter or microammeter in series with a high resistance. The sensitivity of such a meter can be expressed as "ohms per volt", the number of ohms resistance in the meter circuit divided by the full scale measured value. For example a meter with a sensitivity of 1000 ohms per volt would draw 1 milliampere at full scale voltage; if the full scale was 200 volts, the resistance at the instrument's terminals would be 200,000 ohms and at full scale the meter would draw 1 milliampere from the circuit under test. For multi-range instruments, the input resistance varies as the instrument is switched to different ranges. Moving-coil instruments with a permanent-magnet field respond only to direct current. Measurement of AC voltage requires a rectifier in the circuit so that the coil deflects in only one direction. Moving-coil instruments are also made with the zero position in the middle of the scale instead of at one end; these are useful if the voltage reverses its polarity. Voltmeters operating on the electrostatic principle use the mutual repulsion between two charged plates to deflect a pointer attached to a spring. Meters of this type draw negligible current but are sensitive to voltages over about 100 volts and work with either alternating or direct current.

Digital voltmeters

Two digital voltmeters. Note the 40 microvolt difference between the twomeasurements, an offset of 34 parts per million.

The first digital voltmeter was invented and produced by Andrew Kay of Non-Linear Systems (and later founder of Kaypro) in 1954. Digital voltmeters (DVMs) are usually designed around a special type of analog-to-digital convertercalled an integrating converter. Voltmeter accuracy is affected by many factors, including temperature and supply voltage variations. To ensure that a digital voltmeter's reading is within the manufacturer's specified tolerances, they should be periodically calibrated against a voltage standard such as theWeston cell. Digital voltmeters necessarily have input amplifiers, and, like vacuum tube voltmeters, generally have a constant input resistance of 10 megohms regardless of set measurement range

An ammeter is a measuring instrument used to measure the electric current in a circuit. Electric currents are measured in amperes (A), hence the name. Instruments used to measure smaller currents, in the milliampere or microampere range, are designated as milliammeters ormicroammeters. Early ammeters were laboratory instruments which relied on the Earth's magnetic field for operation. By the late 19th century, improved instruments were designed which could be mounted in any position and allowed accurate measurements in electric power systems.

History
The relation between electric current, magnetic fields and physical forces was first noted by Hans Christian rsted who, in 1820, observed a compass needle was deflected from pointing North when a current flowed in an adjacent wire. The tangent galvanometer was used to measure currents using this effect, where the restoring force returning the pointer to the zero position was provided by the Earth's magnetic field. This made these instruments usable only when aligned with the Earth's field. Sensitivity of the instrument was increased by using additional turns of wire to multiply the effect the instruments were called "multipliers".[1]

Types
The D'Arsonval galvanometer is a moving coil ammeter. It uses magnetic deflection, where current passing through a coil causes the coil to move in a magnetic field. The modern form of this instrument was developed by Edward Weston (NOT the American photographer!), and uses two spiral springs to provide the restoring force. By maintaining a uniform air gap between the iron core of the instrument and the poles of its permanent magnet, the instrument has good linearity and accuracy. Basic meter movements can have full-scale deflection for currents from about 25 microamperes to 10 milliamperes and have linear scales.[2] Moving iron ammeters use a piece of iron which moves when acted upon by the electromagnetic force of a fixed coil of wire. This type of meter responds to both direct andalternating currents (as opposed to the moving coil ammeter, which works on direct currentonly). The iron element consists of a moving vane attached to a pointer, and a fixed vane, surrounded by a coil. As alternating or direct current flows through the coil and induces a magnetic field in both vanes, the vanes repel each other and the moving vane deflects against the restoring force provided by fine helical springs.[2] The non-linear scale of these meters makes them unpopular. An electrodynamic movement uses an electromagnet instead of the permanent magnet of the d'Arsonval movement. This instrument can respond to both alternating and direct current.[2]

In a hot-wire ammeter, a current passes through a wire which expands as it heats. Although these instruments have slow response time and low accuracy, they were sometimes used in measuring radiofrequency current.
[2]

Digital ammeter designs use an analog to digital converter (ADC) to measure the voltage across the shunt resistor; the digital display is calibrated to read the current through the shunt. There is also a whole range of devices referred to as integrating ammeters.[3][4] In these ammeters the amount of current is summed over time giving as a result the product of current and time, which is proportional to the energy transferred with that current. These can be used for energy meters (watt-hour meters) or for estimating the charge of battery or capacitor