[sdiy] DMM Question (Newbie Alert!)

[Oren Leavitt]

Sam Ecoff wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> In order to reduce my newbie-ness and educate myself, I'm picking up  
> some EE classes at the local tech college. It's fun and keeps me off  
> the streets. While in lab measuring resistors today, a question  
> occurred which the professor was unable to answer, so I'm asking here...
> 
> I get that a DMM provides different ranges settings for measuring  
> various resistances with greater accuracy, and I understand that each  
> range setting on the dial represents a different power of 10. What I  
> don't understand is why the settings are marked 2M, 200k, 20k, 2k and  
> 200 rather than 1M, 100k, 10k, 1k, and 100. Can anybody help me figure  
> this out?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Sam E.

Hi Sam,

Most digital displays have a maximum digit display capacity of (for 
example) "4 1/2 digits" or +-19999 with the upper-most "half" digit 
displaying just a "1" and a +/- sign.
For the "2k" range, the display will show +/- 1.9999 ("K" implied or 
indicated otherwise)

- Oren