If the resistance in one arm of a Wheatstone bridge is increased, what effect does it have on the balance condition?
Practice Questions
1 question
Q1
If the resistance in one arm of a Wheatstone bridge is increased, what effect does it have on the balance condition?
The bridge will always remain balanced.
The bridge will become unbalanced.
The balance condition will improve.
It has no effect.
Increasing the resistance in one arm will disturb the balance condition, making the bridge unbalanced.
Questions & Step-by-step Solutions
1 item
Q
Q: If the resistance in one arm of a Wheatstone bridge is increased, what effect does it have on the balance condition?
Solution: Increasing the resistance in one arm will disturb the balance condition, making the bridge unbalanced.
Steps: 6
Step 1: Understand what a Wheatstone bridge is. It is a circuit used to measure unknown resistances by balancing two legs of a bridge circuit.
Step 2: Identify the components of the Wheatstone bridge. It has four resistors arranged in a diamond shape with a voltage source and a galvanometer.
Step 3: Know the balance condition. The bridge is balanced when the ratio of the resistances in one arm equals the ratio in the other arm, resulting in zero current through the galvanometer.
Step 4: Consider what happens when you increase the resistance in one arm. This changes the ratio of resistances in that arm.
Step 5: Realize that changing the resistance in one arm disrupts the balance condition. The ratios are no longer equal.
Step 6: Conclude that increasing the resistance in one arm makes the bridge unbalanced, causing current to flow through the galvanometer.