How to... check a multimeter fuse

After almost 14 years as a physics technician, I can't believe I only just figured this out!


The multimeters we use have a 250mA fuses, which often gets blown if the students have set the meter up on the wrong setting and the current is too high. For 14 years I've been dismantling meters to check whether a blown fuse is responsible for an experiment not working properly, but now I have the solution!

• take 2 multimeters - one set to ohms and the other, which you want to test, set to mA
• Connect the ohm meter across the mA meter
• If the ohm meter reads 1, then the fuse is blown and you still have to dismantle the meter to change it
• If the ohm meter reads 0 (or thereabouts) then the fuse is fine.

The meter on the left is set to ohms and is testing the one on the right. This multimeter is fine.

Recruiting

There's still time to apply for the chem tech job but we've had a few applicants already.


Earlier this week my HoD said that he'd like me to be involved in the selection process. I guess normally the chemistry HoD would be in charge of this, but he's leaving us at Christmas so it's mostly fallen to my HoD, since he's overall head of science as well as physics. It certainly makes sense for both me and bio tech to at least meet the candidates, since although we don't work very closely we do need to coordinate resources etc at times, but I did point out that generally helping to draw up the shortlist and even maybe being in the interviews is really more of a senior technician thing, 'and I'm not senior technician'. 'Ah, but you will be' was the answer to that one, so he obviously hasn't forgotten the carrot HR dangled under my nose last term when I was thinking of leaving.


This morning he passed me a bunch of application forms to look at. One out of the five is already working as a technician, but all of them have strong science backgrounds. I kind of have a favourite, but that's only on paper. Looking forward to meeting them in the flesh once we set an interview date.

Chemistry vacancy

The rumours turned out to be true, and chem tech is definitely leaving us. The advert for his job has gone live on the school website today along with the job description so fingers crossed we get lots of lovely applicants.


I know I grumble a lot about work, but this is a good place to be most of the time, so don't let me put you off applying!