Page:A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism - Volume 2.djvu/384



COMPARISON OF COILS..

752.] have seen in Art. 717 that in a sensitive galvanometer the coils should be of small radius, and should contain many windings of the wire. It would be extremely difficult to determine the electrical constants of such a coil by direct measurement of its form and dimensions, even if we could obtain access to every winding of the wire in order to measure it. But in fact the greater number of the windings are not only completely hidden by the outer windings, but we are uncertain whether the pressure of the outer windings may not have altered the form of the inner ones after the coiling of the wire.

It is better therefore to determine the electrical constants of the coil by direct electrical comparison with a standard coil whose constants are known.

Since the dimensions of the standard coil must be determined by actual measurement, it must be made of considerable size, so that the unavoidable error of measurement of its diameter or circumference may be as small as possible compared with the quantity measured. The channel in which the coil is wound should be of rectangular section, and the dimensions of the section should be small compared with the radius of the coil. This is necessary, not so much in order to diminish the correction for the size of the section, as to prevent any uncertainty about the position of those windings of the coil which are hidden by the external windings.