EE 213 Electrical Circuits Laboratory Fall 2019

EXPERIMENT 1
Introduction to Voltage, Current, and Resistance Measurements

Objectives

In this experiment, you will learn:

1. How to determine the resistance of an unknown resistor by:
1.1. Reading the color codes,
1.2. Using a multimeter.
2. How to identify the differences between analog and digital multimeters by measuring and comparing
the internal battery voltage of analog and digital multimeters,
3. How to measure the AC line voltage.
4. How to measure DC currents and voltages using a digital multimeter in a resistive circuit.
5. What a rheostat is.
6. How to determine terminal characteristics of linear and non-linear resistors.
7. Equivalent resistances when resistors are connected in parallel or in series.

Preliminary Work
Study Notes on Multimeters and Introduction to Basic Circuit Elements, which are available on the
ODTUCLASS.

Equipment List
 Analog multimeter
 Digital multimeter
 Breadboard
 Carbon resistors: 1 kΩ, 4.7 kΩ, 18 kΩ
 Diode: 1N4007
 Potentiometers: 1 kΩ POT, 10 kΩ POT, 100 kΩ POT

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EE 213 Electrical Circuits Laboratory Fall 2019

Experimental Work
1. Perform the following steps and comment on the results. While reporting the measurements, assume
measurement accuracy to be no better than 0.1% so that use at most 4 significant digits. You may assume the
accuracy to be between 0.1% and 1%, so that 4 to 3 significant figures should be sufficient.
a) Reading its color code, determine and record the nominal value and tolerance of each carbon resistor
as well as recording the corresponding color codes. As this is your first experiment, it would be useful
to remind you that you should report such results in tabular form without forgetting the
corresponding units.
b) Measure the resistances of resistors using a digital multimeter and record them.
2. Measure the minimum and maximum resistances of 1 kΩ and 10 kΩ potentiometers using a digital
multimeter. Why does the resistance not change when you connect the measurement probes to the
opposing ends?
3. Multimeters have internal batteries in resistance measurement mode as mentioned in “Notes on
Multimeters”.
a) Set an analog multimeter for resistance measurement. Measure the internal battery voltage of the
analog multimeter using a digital multimeter and make sure that COM ports of both devices are
connected to each other as well as HO ports. Measure this voltage for all four ohmmeter scales of
the analog multimeter. Do not forget to indicate the polarity of the voltage.
b) Repeat Part 3.a by exchanging the multimeters, i.e., measure the internal battery voltage of the digital
multimeter by the analog multimeter when the digital multimeter is at different ohmmeter scales.
(Do for the all seven scales.) Comment on the differences between two cases. Which device do you
think would result in higher measurement accuracy?
4. Set an analog multimeter for AC voltage measurement and measure the line voltage. Be sure that the
multimeter is within the range of 500 V AC.
5. Set up the circuit given in Figure 1. Measure and record all the currents and voltages using a digital
multimeter.

kΩ

kΩ kΩ

Figure 1. The circuit diagram for Part 5.

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6. Setup the circuit given in Figure 2 to measure the resistance of a carbon resistor (Use a 4.7 kΩ resistor
as R). Initially, set v’ to its minimum value. Adjust the rheostat so that v becomes 9, 7, 5 and 0 volts (just
remove the POT to have infinite resistance so that R has 0 volts over it or just make an educated guess).
For each case measure and record the current i.
a) Obtain and plot i versus v graph on MATLAB and determine the resistance of R. You can find some
instructions at the appendix.
b) Measure and record the resistance of R using an analog multimeter.
c) Measure and record the resistance of R using a digital multimeter.
d) Compare the results obtained in Parts 6.a, 6.b, and 6.c.

Figure 2. The circuit diagram for Part 6.

7. Setup the circuit given in Figure 3 by replacing the resistor R in Figure 2 with a 1N4007 diode. Adjust the
rheostat so that i becomes 0 A (open circuit the POT), 200 μA, 500 μA, 1 mA, 2 mA, 5 mA, 10mA and 20
mA. Note that you should use 100 kΩ POT for the first up to current values of 1 mA, use 10 kΩ POT for
the first up to current values of 10 mA and 1 kΩ POT for higher current values for your convenience in
order not to burn out the components. Start at the middle of POT knob position whenever you replace
the POT, slowly rotating each time to achieve slow variations. For each case, measure and record the
voltage v. Obtain and plot i versus v graph on MATLAB.
Comment on the differences between the plots in Parts 6 and 7.

Figure 3. The circuit diagram for Part 7.

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Appendix I – MATLAB Plots

From Wikipedia, “MATLAB (matrix laboratory) is a multi-paradigm numerical computing environment and
proprietary programming language developed by MathWorks”. However, you will be using MATLAB mostly for
your plots in both EE213 and EE214. This appendix is meant to give you a small introduction in order to perform
this task. Fig. 4 shows the default view that you should view when you start MATLAB (except for box 4 which you
will start in a minute). Left hand side (1) shows the folder content and it should be used to navigate within the file
system, bottom part (2) shows the command prompt where you can call all of MATLAB’s functions one by one,
right hand side (3) is the workspace where you can see all the variables you created and (4) is the m-file editor
which you can use to write – as far as you are interested in this course – reusable MATLAB scripts (i.e. a sequence
of functions calls).

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4 3

Figure 4. MATLAB Default View

 Keeping the introduction quite brief, navigate using the contents in box (1) to the drive Z. You can use the
arrow left to the drive C: to achieve this. You are required to use this folder to transfer soft (digital) versions of
your plots for your report. By using it, you are saving the files to the files to the computer with internet access.
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 Click on New Script under the Home tab. Now a view similar to Fig. 4 should be visible.

 Type in the following code to the opened window and save the file giving it a reasonable name (e.g.
exp_1_step_3.m).

 The following is a set of self-explanatory function calls that you can write to the script to make a plot. You
do not have to input the comment lines as they are ignored by MATLAB. Hit F9 and the code will be run.

% This line is a MATLAB comment line which the interpreter ignores, just
% like a .c line starting with comment prefix (i.e. //).

% Below line creates current measurement array "i" from, say, an

% experiment, with let's say units of mA
i = [1.96 1.53 1.11 0];

% Similarly, the voltage measurement array (or vector)

v = [9.02 7.02 5.07 0];

% The following is the plot function, whose inputs are the x-axis array,
% y-axis array and optional plot arguments. Since the voltage is the
% independent variable (by changing it we cause a current value dependent
% on the voltage value), let's put it on x-axis, "i" on y-axis. Optionally,
% I decided the plot to have circles at measurements ("o") connected by
% lines ("-") so that is the third input.
plot(v,i,'o-')

% Plot grid lines for easily readible graph

grid minor % only grid command would draw coarser grid points
% Feel free to type "help plot" on the command window to see some useful
% help whenever you cannot remember a command.

% x-axis label, where strings in MATLAB are represented as texts within %

% apostrophes (i.e. 'some string').
xlabel('Voltage (V)')
ylabel('Current (mA)')
% Omega being the Greek letter for ohm(ega) and \Omega being its annotation
title('i vs. v characteric of 4.7 k\Omega resistor')

% Feel free to contact the coordinator assistant for any clarity on this
% document; maybe, one day this may turn into a standalone MATLAB tutorial
% document sufficient for EE213/214 students.

% Also, you may keep a printout of this appendix in your other experiments
% and endterm exam.

 A figure should now be open by running the script. Click on FileSave as and save the file with a proper
name with its type being enhanced metafile (.emf). This is the vector graphics format supported by
Microsoft Office, try zooming into and out of your report once you finish writing it to see why vector
graphics should be the preferred option.
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