-1-

WHEATSTONE BRIDGE

LAB REPORT
PHY 204
OCTOBER 6, 2011

Introduction A Wheatstone bridge is an electrical circuit used to measure an unknown

electrical resistance by balancing two legs of a bridge circuit, one leg of which includes the

-2unknown component. It was invented by Samuel Hunter Christie in 1833 and improved and
popularized by Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1843. The advantage of this device is that it eliminates
the internal resistance or current that other measurement devices have, which effect the circuit
they are measuring. This is possible because when the two legs of the circuit are balanced there
is no current flowing between them, which not only tells you that the circuit is balanced but
when the current is zero, there is no effect of the meter on the circuit. When this lab is complete,
a student will have a better understanding of circuit testing devices, especially the ohmmeter,
their uses, advantages and disadvantages, and specifically how to construct a Wheatstone bridge
to make the more accurate resistance measurements.

Apparatus
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o

Wheatstone bridge board

Resistance Box with adjustable resistance values
2V power supply
Galvanometer
Rheostat
1 meter of NiChrome Wire .010
Meter stick
Micrometer
Digital Multimeter
Single clay resistor in the 5K Ohm range

Procedure Part I. Connect the circuit as shown in Figure 2. Set the resistance box R1 to 7
ohms. Cut 1 meter of wire from the spool and connect one end to the screw in the center of the
Bridge board and the other to the alligator clip from the Galvanometer at a distance of 50 Cm
from the screw. The rheostat can be used to adjust the sensitivity of the bridge, (but in our case
the rheostat was not making a connection anywhere except for the lowest setting position so it
could not be properly used.) Take the other end of the galvanometer and connect it near the
center of the L1/l2 wire. Observe the needle of the galvanometer as the clip is moved along the

-3L1/L2 wire and find a place where the needle reads zero. This point determines L1 becomes L2.
Record the distances of L1 and L2. Repeat these measurements for wire lengths of 60, 70, 80, 90,
and 100 Cm.
Part II. Take the resistor provided by the TA and read and record the color code. Set the
resistance box to a value that is approximately within 20% of the resistor value. Use a DMM set
to ohms, measure and record another reading of the resistance value. Clip the resistor in place of
the wire in the previous experiment and use the same process as the previous experiment to
calculate the resistor value. Record resistor value so you end up using three different
measurement methods to find the resistance.

Data Book

Experiment I -- Resistance
Calculations
Material = 0.0254 (CM) NiChrome
Length of wire (M)

R1 value (Ohms)

L1 (M)

L2 (M)

RX (Ohms)

0.45

0.58

0.42

9.67

0.55

0.63

0.37

11.92

0.65

0.67

0.33

14.21

0.75

0.7

0.3

16.33

0.85

0.72

0.28

18.00

0.95

0.75

0.25

21.00

-4-

Experiment I -- Resistivity
Calculations
Material = 0.0254 (CM) NiChrome
Slope from Experiment
1 Graph

Radius of wire (M)

Area (M2 )

Resistivit
y (Ohm
*M)

22.009

1.27E-04

5.067E-08

1.12E-06

-5-

Experiment II Bridge Calculation

Unknown
Resistor

R1 value
(Ohms)

L1 (CM)

L2 (CM)

RX
(Ohms)

RX

5100

50.5

49.5

5203.03

Experiment II Results
Unknown Resistor
Unknown
Resistor

Bridge Value
(Ohms)

Color code Value

(Ohms)

Ohmmeter
Value

RX

5203

5100

5180

Analysis
The idea in this lab is that measuring the resistance in the Wheatstone bridge method give a more
accurate reading because the internal resistance of the meters are taken out of the equation. the
longer the L1/L2 are the more resolution and less error the setup should have. Since the reading
of when the galvanometer shows a balanced circuit is zero, this lowers the complexity of the
meter since it can measure zero current relatively accurately.
Calculations The calculations is this lab were quite straight forward. Actually I let Excel do all
the work. To calculate the resistances of the lengths of nichrome wire, the calculation is simple
the ratio of L1 /L2 multiplied by R1To calculate the resistivity we need the slope of our graph,

-6which is just the resistance divided by the length. This is multiplied by the area which of course
is pi*R^2
Significant Figures I did not at all feel confident with the equipment used in the lab. I did not
have any method of calibrating our results against a positively known result and we did not know
the actual error in the resistor decade box or the single clay resistor so I'm concluding an error
range of up to 20%

Discussion
One point that I felt was significant in this lab is the idea that using some basic equation
manipulation combined with some basic hardware, a new device can be made that greatly
improves the accuracy of the measuring equipment. This lesson should be remembered and
applied to future physics problems or situations.
I suspect that there may be some hidden resistance in the hardware of the bridge equipment. It
was very old and to complete the setup, many wire leads had to be connected. If the number of
shaky connections could be eliminated, I would expect the accuracy would go up.
I would like a resistor of a positively know value to be available. This way a test could be made
of the accuracy and boost confidence in the accuracy of the process.

Conclusion
In this lab we have successfully used the bridge device to measure resistance. Since we measured
a known resistor and had a reading within the tolerance range of the resistor we can conclude
that our measurements are at least close to being correct. However, without having any
knowledge of the actual value of the resistance of the nichrome wire it would be premature to
conclude that out tests are more accurate then the DMM measurements

-7-

Analysis Questions
1.

Is there a difference between the resistor color code and the bridge value? Yes. The
resistor color code of Green Brown Red Gold indicate a nominal resistance of 5100 ohms
with a tolerance of 5% while the bridge measured 5203. The 5% on the tolerance allows a
range or 4845 to5355 ohms which could explain the difference. This assumes that our bridge
was actually measuring correctly.