Crossword clues for galvanometer
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Galvanometer \Gal`va*nom"e*ter\, n. [Galvanic + -meter: cf. F. galvanom[`e]tre.] (Elec.) An instrument or apparatus for measuring the intensity of an electric current, usually by the deflection of a magnetic needle.
Differential galvanometer. See under Differental, a.
Sine galvanometer, Cosine galvanometer, Tangent galvanometer (Elec.), a galvanometer in which the sine, cosine, or tangent respectively, of the angle through which the needle is deflected, is proportional to the strength of the current passed through the instrument.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
instrument for detecting and measuring electric current, 1801, from galvano-, used as a comb. form of galvanism + -meter. Related: Galvanometric. Galvanoscope "instrument for detecting and determining the direction of electric current" is from 1832.
Wiktionary
n. (context physics English) A device used to indicate the presence and direction of a small electric current, especially used to detect a null or balanced condition in a bridge circuit.
WordNet
n. meter for detecting or comparing or measuring small electric currents
Wikipedia
A galvanometer is an electromechanical instrument for detecting and measuring electric current. The most common use of galvanometers was as analog measuring instruments, called ammeters, used to measure the direct current (flow of electric charge) through an electric circuit. A galvanometer works as an actuator, by producing a rotary deflection (of a "pointer"), in response to electric current flowing through a coil in a constant magnetic field.
Galvanometers developed from the observation that the needle of a magnetic compass is deflected near a wire that has electric current flowing through it, first described by Hans Oersted in 1820. They were the first instruments used to detect and measure small amounts of electric currents. The name comes from the Italian electricity researcher Luigi Galvani, who in 1791 discovered the principle of the frog galvanoscope – that electric current would make the legs of a dead frog jerk.
Sensitive galvanometers have been essential for the development of science and technology in many fields. For example, they enabled long range communication through submarine cables, such as the earliest Transatlantic telegraph cables, and were essential to discovering the electrical activity of the heart and brain, by their fine measurements of current.
Galvanometers also had widespread use as the visualising part in other kinds of analog meters, for example in light meters, VU meters, etc., where they were used to measure and display the output of other sensors. Today the main type of galvanometer mechanism, still in use, is the moving coil, D'Arsonval/Weston type.
Usage examples of "galvanometer".
To accomplish this, we employ an instrument called a galvanometer, or amperemeter, illustrated in Fig.
One lead hooked him into the plethysmograph and the Lissajous oscilloscope and the GSR galvanometer.
Barrett ran his eyes across the instruments already on the table: astatic galvanometer, mirror galvanometer, quadrant electrometer, Crookes balance, camera, gauze cage, smoke absorber, manometer, weighing platform, tape recorder.
From what little knowledge I have of electricity I should have said it was, in part at least, a galvanometer, one of those instruments which register the intensity of minute electric currents.
The idea is that the current in the cable, by passing through an electromechanical device, will cause this tube to move slightly to one side or the other, just like the spot of light in the mirror galvanometer.
Between the poles of the galvanometer was stretched a slender thread of fused quartz plated with silver, only one one- thousandth of a millimetre in diameter, so tenuous that it could not be seen except in a bright light.
The person with murder in his heart cannot hide it from the string galvanometer, nor can that person who wrote the false note in which the very lines of the letters betray a diseased heart hide that disease.
Use of the Wheatstone bridge relies on achieving a null current with the highest attainable level of precision, and for this purpose, no instrument on earth was better suited than the Kelvin mirror galvanometer.