Ohmmeter

The original design of an ohmmeter provided a small battery to apply a voltage to a resistance. It used 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 decreased, the current through the meter would increase.

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:

 R = V/I.

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 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 is ignored by the meter.