What Measuring Instruments Are and Their Types
Advances in science and technology are accompanied by parallel advances in measurement. In fact, it can be said that the quickest way to assess the state of science and technology in a country is to examine the measurements being made and how the data collected by the measurements are used. The reasons are simple. As science and technology advance, new phenomena and relationships are discovered that require new types of measurements. At the same time, advances in science and technology provide the means to make new kinds of measurements that contribute to understanding. This in turn leads to discoveries that make even more measurements possible and desirable. It goes without saying, then, that sophisticated science and technology are associated with sophisticated measurements.
As time has progressed, measurement technologies have increasingly relied on electrical and electronic methods. This has occurred for two reasons. First, once information is converted into electrical form, it can easily be processed in a variety of ways to meet the needs of many individual situations. Second, most phenomena such as temperature, speed, distance, light, sound, and pressure can be easily converted into electrical indications for further processing and interpretation.
Over the past 50 years, a remarkable world of electronic devices has evolved that support and power the ever-pushing frontiers of knowledge, and in addition, allow old tasks to be performed more easily and accurately. Modern electronic instruments are typically straightforward, making it unnecessary to use calibration curves. Their outputs are available in digital form. In addition, digital data can be processed by a computer that can immediately perform the necessary additional calculations, eliminating the possibility of errors and saving valuable staff time. Through the use of recorders and oscilloscopes, it is now possible to plot the final results in graph form, further speeding up the whole process of data collection and analysis.
Half a century ago, most electronic measurements were made using instruments that the experimenter built with his own hands. These early instruments were usually impractical and mostly useless unless operated by highly trained personnel, ideally the person who built them. This situation has now changed completely. Today, a person can usually buy a much better tool than he or she could build themselves, and does not need to have expert knowledge of a particular tool to keep it adjusted and working properly. Yet, even with the wide range of professionally made tools offered in catalogs today, the user must provide his own input to take full advantage of the options available to him. He must know what the particular instruments he is using do and do not measure, what difficulties may arise in making measurements under special or unusual conditions, what the possibilities and limitations are, and what errors may be caused by waveform distortion, noise, stray electrical currents, etc.
If you can measure what you are talking about and express it in numbers, then you are at the beginning of a journey of discovery.
Measuring instruments and their types
Oscilloscopes
Oscilloscopes are instruments used to visualize electrical signals. They allow you to monitor voltage changes over time and are essential for analyzing signals in electronics. Modern oscilloscopes offer high sampling rates and wide bandwidth, allowing detailed analysis of fast signals.
