How to Measure Components in an Electronic Circuit

An electronic measure has two components: the magnitude and the unit. The magnitude is the number of units in the measure and the unit is an unambiguously defined physical quantity. The following steps will show how to measure components in an electronic circuit.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Look at the measure's magnitude. This is simply a number which may have a decimal point to separate the integer portion from the decimal portion of the number. Each place represents a 10-fold increase when moving to the left and therefore a 10-fold decrease when going to the right. For example, 12.34 is one 10, two ones, three tenths and four hundredths.

2. Examine the prefix (if any) for the units. The metric system is used almost universally in electronics and has standardized prefixes that determine the decimal fraction or multiple of the unit to use.

3. Learn the abbreviations for the common prefixes. The prefixes most commonly used are those for powers of 10 that are divisible by 3. For decimal multiples, we have K for Kilo (10^3), M for Mega (10^6), G for Giga (10^9), and T for Tera. For decimal fractions, we have m for milli (10^-3), u (lowercase Greek mu) for micro (10^-6), n for nano (10^-9) and p for pico (10^-12).

4. Study the common units of measure in electronics. Current is measured in amps (A), potential difference is measured in volts (V), resistance is measured in ohms (uppercase Greek omega), capacitance is measured in farads (F) and impedance is measured in henries (H).

5. Observe some common examples of component measures. A power supply labeled with 1.2 mA would have a capacity of 1.2 milliamps or 0.0012 amps, an 8 kO resistor would have a resistance of 8 kilo-ohms or 8,000 ohms and a 1,200 pF capacitor would have a capacitance of 1,200 picofarads or 0.0000012 farads.

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on 9/16/2009 EXCELLENT