Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An instrument for measuring an unknown voltage by comparison to a standard voltage.
- noun A three-terminal resistor with an adjustable center connection, widely used for volume control in radio and television receivers.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An instrument used for measuring the difference of electrical potential between two points.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Elec.) An instrument for measuring or comparing electrial potentials or electro-motive forces.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun electronics a user-adjustable variable resistor that functions as a voltage divider.
- noun physics an
instrument thatmeasures avoltage by opposing it with aprecise fraction of a known voltage, and without drawing current from the unknown source.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a measuring instrument for measuring direct current electromotive forces
- noun a resistor with three terminals, the third being an adjustable center terminal; used to adjust voltages in radios and TV sets
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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A current from the dry cell _Ba_ is constantly flowing through the main, or so-called potentiometer circuit, _ABCDGEF_.
The Working of Steel Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel 1916
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-- The potentiometer is the electrical equivalent of the chemical balance, or balance arm scales.
The Working of Steel Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel 1916
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However, by purchasing and inserting a miniphone to miniphone "potentiometer" read "volume control" in line with his setup, the output of the record player/stereo reciever can be reduced before the input to the computer.
Video: How to backup old records into MP3s (for free) | Sync Blog 2008
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The acoustic tones from the piezos and the electric tones from the magnetic pickups can be blended together with a constant-grade potentiometer, meaning any combination of the two tones can be achieved from control and blended through the same output.
Gearwire - 2008
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"potentiometer" or "gynecological," and at times I've been obsessed with trying to recall a word I knew existed but which I couldn't remember for some reason.
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Basically ABC proved that if you bypass a potentiometer with a resistor, you can spoof the potentiometer setting.
Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » Somebody Should Write About This… 2010
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Tom adjusted the thermograph potentiometer to zero deflection and checked the circuit once more.
I, TOO, DREAM.... 2010
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I know most of you are thinking: "That is a small motor encased in a plastic tube, attached to a potentiometer and a pushswitch, so that some weird electric guitar player can use it to excite his guitar strings and magnetic pickups and generate an annoying electromagnetic whine."
Boing Boing 2007
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An MOS transistor in parallel with your power-level potentiometer would be one way to do it, with control at the MOS gate.
RadioPopper JrX Will Make You Fat and Happy [Full Review] 2009
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I know this may sound daunting but it's a matter of opening up the flash, discharging the capacitor very important i.e life threatening: an analogue voltmeter across the connections will do the trick disconnecting the two wires from the light sensor and soldering them onto a logarithmic potentiometer which will cost you about £1.30 from Maplin.
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