What is the smallest physically-possible voltage that can be detected or processed given the state of today's technology?

That was my point. It was supposed to be funny... I guess I needed to add the smiley.

One of the things I have thought about is when in court defending a ticket for not stopping at a stop sign, asserting that there is no defense possible since you can never prove a quantity is exactly zero by measurement. Somehow I suspect the interesting aspects of this defense would be lost on the judge...

Rick

The usual way. It's not a magic voltmeter!

Rick

Can't you always chop a DC current to produce an AC current? Even if the current is very high, the fact that it is at a very low voltage makes it hard to get any of that current to flow through your measuring device, even if it is a transformer.

I suppose that you could pass the entire current through the measuring device and then calculate the voltage by knowing the impedance... But I don't see how having a high current help a direct measurement of a low voltage.

Rick

Judges don't have a sense of humor, and most have no common sense.

Sigh.

All responders have been suckered by the green monster.

Bill

That is true, but the femtovolt question is interesting, independent of who asked it. I base my replies on the question, not the questioner. It might be that the answer is independent of the original question.

-- glen

WRONG! If you had said "many" or possibly "most" that would be something else. For over three years I sat in on local Justice of Peace every Monday. Great entertainment! It was free, educational, and entertaining to boot.

I meant not "How, exactly", but "exact to what extent".

Jerry

No... it cannot. In fact, nothing can.

Zero volts cannot be measured no matter what parasitics are in place or are not.

Nothingness cannot be quantified. Only tangibles can. Zero is not tangible, it is the absence of tangibility.

We should all refrain from replying to your horseshit then.

No, as in: there is no such measurement capacity available anywhere on any device.

Your statement has 'bent' grammar. Insert word "points" or choose different manner to ask same question as in: "to what degree of accuracy".

] Not if it is turned on it wont.

Oh yes he was, and so is most of the other responses to him.

If the meter is off, there will be no display. If it is on, it will not be very likely to read zero volts when probing a bare piece of metal or shorting the leads.

Like a scale that has been zeroed, one will see drift above and below the zero line if the scale can resolve to tenths of a gram. It will also drift as the internal electronics heats up. Not so much with a meter as with scale electronics, for some reason.

So if the meter has more than 2 digits behind the decimal point, one will likely see errant values pop in and out.

The little twit "takes" responsibility for exercising our brains.

He feels that posts that get responses and incite discussion means that he was the one that got us going, so he feels vindicated for all the crap he never got done in real life.

Yes, your FM receiver. Usually takes 3 or more though.

We call them radios.

Satellite and deep space radio waves exhibit even less energy. That what the big concentrator dishes are for.

Yeah, and then there are those of us that, as we aged and learned, did not decide to cast out half of what we were taught and pull crap like ignoring rules, not using turn signals, flicking their cigarette butts out onto the rest of the world, forgetting what the rule is for a stop sign, and generally growing up thinking they are smart, and then doing stupid shit like applying to much precision where less is used by the rest of the world, and invariably using too little where it is needed, and then they have a wreck, and want to call it "an accident" when they should be charged with negligence.

It was an accident that we let them make laws that allow any dumb mutant to get a license to drive. Because invariably some other retarded mutant observes said mutant driving, and then picks up his mutated foul driving habits.

It would have to be to be able to measure zero volts, since such feats are not possible.

Ahh... the resolution question again. He already answered that one too, you just have to read what was written.

Another resolution question is the guys trying to determine the age of the universe.

I would think it quite hard to look that far back because things would be so distorted that even your determination of how far back you are "seeing" could be off an order of magnitude. 13.5 Billion years could really be 135 Billion.

See you on 12/20/2012.