15 Oct
2008
15 Oct
'08
4:42 p.m.
I rememebr having a long arguement with a physics
teacher who
insisted a bridge circuit couldn't be used to measure capacitance,
but only to compare capacitors. I am strill trying to find a
definition of 'measurement' which does not involve comparison to a
standard.
Yes, but that standard does not have to be another of the type of thing
being measured.
In the case of capacitance, I think it's fair to draw a distinctino
between measuring capacitance in the form of "this capacitance is 12.7
times that one" and measuring capacitance in the form of, say, "it
takes 137ms for a 10mA current to charge this capacitance up to 50mV"
or "with a 50kohm resistor this capacitance exhibits an R-C time
constant of 27ms".
You will not, however, catch me defending said teacher's insistance
that "measure" is an inappropriate verb for one of those. :-)
/~\ The ASCII Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B