Wheatstone bridge

Wheatstone bridge
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 unknown component. Its operation is similar to the original potentiometer. It was invented by Samuel Hunter Christie in 1833 and improved and popularized by Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1843. [1]

Operation
In the figure, is the unknown resistance , and are
Wheatstone bridge circuit diagram.

to be measured;

resistors of known resistance and the resistance of is adjustable. If the ratio of the two resistances in the known leg is equal to the ratio of the two in the unknown leg the direction of the current indicates whether

, then the voltage between the two . If the bridge is unbalanced, is varied until there is no current , and disrupt the

midpoints (B and D) will be zero and no current will flow through the galvanometer is too high or too low.

through the galvanometer, which then reads zero. Detecting zero current with a galvanometer can be done to extremely high accuracy. Therefore, if are known to high precision, then balance and are readily detected. At the point of balance, the ratio of Therefore, Alternatively, if , , and are known, but can be measured to high precision. Very small changes in

is not adjustable, the voltage difference across or current , using Kirchhoff's circuit laws (also known as

flow through the meter can be used to calculate the value of

Kirchhoff's rules). This setup is frequently used in strain gauge and resistance thermometer measurements, as it is usually faster to read a voltage level off a meter than to adjust a resistance to zero the voltage.

Derivation
First, Kirchhoff's first rule is used to find the currents in junctions B and D:

Then, Kirchhoff's second rule is used for finding the voltage in the loops ABD and BCD:

The bridge is balanced and

, so the second set of equations can be rewritten as:

Wheatstone bridge Then, the equations are divided and rearranged, giving:

From the first rule,

and

. The desired value of

is now known to be given as:

If all four resistor values and the supply voltage ( enough that

) are known, and the resistance of the galvanometer is high ) can be found by working out the voltage from

is negligible, the voltage across the bridge (

each potential divider and subtracting one from the other. The equation for this is:

This can be simplified to:

where

is the voltage of node B relative to node D.

Significance
The Wheatstone bridge illustrates the concept of a difference measurement, which can be extremely accurate. Variations on the Wheatstone bridge can be used to measure capacitance, inductance, impedance and other quantities, such as the amount of combustible gases in a sample, with an explosimeter. The Kelvin bridge was specially adapted from the Wheatstone bridge for measuring very low resistances. In many cases, the significance of measuring the unknown resistance is related to measuring the impact of some physical phenomenon - such as force, temperature, pressure, etc. - which thereby allows the use of Wheatstone bridge in measuring those elements indirectly. The concept was extended to alternating current measurements by James Clerk Maxwell in 1865 and further improved by Alan Blumlein in about 1926.

Modifications of the fundamental bridge

The Wheatstone bridge is the fundamental bridge, but there are other modifications that can be made to measure various kinds of resistances when the fundamental Wheatstone bridge is not suitable. Some of the modifications are: Carey Foster bridge, for measuring small resistances Kelvin Varley Slide Kelvin Double bridge Maxwell bridge

Wheatstone bridge

References
[1] "The Genesis of the Wheatstone Bridge" by Stig Ekelof discusses Christie's and Wheatstone's contributions, and why the bridge carries Wheatstone's name. Published in "Engineering Science and Education Journal", volume 10, no 1, February 2001, pages 37 - 40.

External links
Wheatstone Bridge - Interactive Java Tutorial (http://www.magnet.fsu.edu/education/tutorials/java/ wheatstonebridge/index.html) National High Magnetic Field Laboratory efunda Wheatstone article (http://www.efunda.com/designstandards/sensors/methods/wheatstone_bridge. cfm) Methods of Measuring Electrical Resistance - Edwin F. Northrup, 1912, full-text on Google Books (http://books. google.com/books?id=z3lKAAAAMAAJ) Measuring strain using Wheatstone bridge principles (http://www.strainmatics.com)

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