Ya sorry you got me. I meant resistance. duh i'll be alright.

 

Sorry, but im curious now. How can you use a multimeter wrong?

 

When testing amperage and putting the leads in series with the source and not having it set on the right selection may overload it and it could explode.

 

actually, that would just blow the internal protection fuse (done it before) but if you were to test voltage with it in the amps scale, it presents a dead short to your voltage source, it'd basically be like putting a piece of wire across the source, at 600 volts, things explode and people die. at 12 volts, with a battery, you can fry your meter and it could explode as well.

 

That would be bad.

 

ah, multimeters, such a deadly little toy.

i was working on power for my laser, checking resistance in the connections and my boss decided to unplug the test lead from the ohms plug-in and put it in the voltage plug-in.
i hadnt noticed the change and touched the wires.

i tell you, i havent my pants since i was about 5, but that day was very close.
450 volts can be spoooky.

 

in a car environment, I don't see the huge danger, well anymore than doing anything else on the car that you aren't capable of doing yourself...

A brake job gone bad, could land you sailing off a cliff too, but it all comes down to knowing how to use the tools you have, and what the effecs are of misusing them.. I think anyone interested in educating themselves in the proper way to use the tools, and most 'accidents' are avoided.

Mark

 

fyi its not hard to measure impedance with a DMM

all you need is a reference resistor and some test tones/amp

 

that's not impedance, that's resistance, using a resistor, it's resistance. impedance is the total circuit impedance caused by the inductance of the coil, added vecotorally with the resistance of the wire

 

have you ever heard of a wheatstone bridge ?

trust me its not hard to setup...