Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hey guys so what happened is that going through all 3 trials of the expeiment, everything worked perfectly but i forgot to take pics of the multimeter reading the number so when i continued with the experiment the multimeter would read 0 on everything even on the orange juice. I was thinking maybe when i wasnt looking the 2 charges on the the copper wire touched each other so i put everything away. Next week i perform the experiment again with new copper wire, new conductance sensor, new alligator clips ,new battery clips, and new batteries both on the clip and in the multimeter but the outcome is still the same. The only thing i didnt replace is the multimeter but its definitely not broken. I went on the different functions to make sure it was at least catching the volts from the battery an it did. The due date is comin closer, I just need to know whats wrong.

I'm not exactly sure what's going on, but if everything was set up the way it should then one troubleshooting step I would suggest, if not already done is to check the voltage setting on the multimeter. Some multimeters are designed to read different voltage levels depending on the power source. For example, if it's set to 1V output, anything less than one volt will not register and the meter will read 0V. Make sure it is set to read millivolts (mV). 1mV = 0.001V, so if you measure 50mV, then you actually have 0.05V.

Try this and see if you get different results. Hope this helps.

theborg