Hot-Wire Ammeter ‘The hot-wire ammeter indicated in Fig. 3-19 measures the strength of a current by using the heating effect. The current J to be measured flows through the wire AB, which reaches a steady temperature depending on the rate of supply of heat, and expands, the expansion being proportional to the temperature rise. The spring §,, attached to a fibre going round a pulley which carries the pointer, then pulls D to the left and C downwards, thus taking up the expansion and moving the pointer. ZERO ADUUSTMENT ‘spring \PPOINTER, tate roe , oa A LAS Ne TEWsion . nine sppine f enMavet a) Mage LOR Santis Fig. 3.19. General form of the hot-wire ammeter. Since the heating effect is independent of the current direction and also proportional to the square of the current, the instrument works for both direct and alternating current; if it is calibrated on d.c., the a.c. readings will be r.m.s. values—that is, the effective heating values (p. 397). Other advantages are the low inductance and capacitance which (pp. 178 and 260) fit it for moderately high-frequency a.c., the absence of strong permanent magnets, and the almost dead-beat action due to the time it takes for the wire to reach its steady tem- perature, though additional damping is usually provided as indicated. Di advantages are a drift of zero due to thermal and elastic fatigue in the wire, and a shift of the zero duc to changes in the temperature of the whole instrument, but these can be dealt with by adjusting the zero by the screw operating on the spring S,, and the external temperature error compensated by other means. It is said to be easy to burn out with a small current overload, as little as 50 per cent overload causing permanent damage, and this is probably because the bare unsupported wire cannot lose heat to the surroundings very rapidly; and to secure adequate expansion, the wire must be operated fairly close to its melting point. The apparently obvious precaution of a fuse in series with the ammeter is not practicable, for to offer any protection such a fuse would have to blow reliably at, say, 25 per cent overload, and never blow at zero overload; these limits are much too fine. ‘The scale of a hot-wire instrument appears fairly uniformly graduated, and this is at first surprising when we remember that the heating effect is propor- tional to 72, If the simplest heat-loss conditions hold, the steady temperature reached will be such that the rise in temperature of the wire is proportional to J*. ‘Phe expansion x of the wire AB is directly proportional to the rise in temperature and so to /?; but the distance C moves down, and hence the rotation of the pointer, is easily seen by geometry to be almost proportional to +/x, and hence to [. We thus have the useful but curious result of a ‘ square-law ’ instrument with an almost linear scale.