General Lab Equipment Obstacle Course

A general primer in important equipment in a scientific laboratory.

Multimeters

• Measuring voltage
• Measuring current (check that fuse isn't blown!)
• Measuring resistance and testing for continuity
• AC signals
• Clamp meter

Power Supplies

• Digital and Analog
• Floating and grounding
• Current/voltage limiting

Function Generators

(Should look at this in tandem with the following oscilloscope discussion)

• Frequency, amplitude, offset, phase
• Frequency sweep/ramp
• Sine, square (incl. TTL), triangle, sawtooth, arbitrary waveforms (possibly a demonstration of Fourier components)

Oscilloscopes

• Voltage/time scale
• Coupling
• Triggering
• Scope probes
• Termination
• Bandwidth, sampling
• Aliasing
• Analyzing data: cursors, averaging, math menu
• Exporting data
• Analog and digital scopes