TABLE OF CONTENTS The focus of this text is electrical measurement practices. Given this topic, it will be assumed that the reader is either acquainted with or wishes to become acquainted with the basics of electricity. However, even readers with previous knowledge will differ greatly in their depth of understanding, the length of time since their study (if any) of electrical phenomena, and how deeply they absorbed the basic electrical facts.
To make this text as useful as possible to so wide a variety of readers, the first chapters provide the reader with a primer in basic electrical behavior before delving into the practices of measurement. As the focus of this book is not design but tasks of a more practical nature, explanations will employ a very limited amount of mathematics (indeed, only arithmetic). Since electricity cannot be seen and the number of complex explanations for electrical phenomena increases steadily, the text will look only at electrical behavior and use simple (yet accurate) descriptions rather than mathematical models.
What is energy? It is the force that accomplishes work. Physics tells us that work is described as "force through a distance." An electric current can transfer electromotive force and the "source" of energy where the force is generated can be physically separated from the point at where the work is to be performed. An electric current will transfer energy from the source to accomplish work at the "load." In fact, the energy in an electric current may perform the work as well as transfer...
