Ammeter metering energy (the charge needs to be multiplied by the voltage to give energy) or for estimating the charge of a battery or capacitor. A picoammeter, or pico ammeter, measures very low electric current, usually from the picoampere range at the lower end to the milliampere range at the upper end. Picoammeters are used for sensitive measurements where the current being measured is below the theoretical limits of sensitivity of other devices, such as Multimeters. Most picoammeters use a "virtual short" technique and have several different measurement ranges that must be switched between to cover multiple decades of measurement. Other
Conventional electrical unit in this way, and as such, represent a significant step towards using "natural" fundamental physics for practical measurement purposes. However, the conventional electrical units are unlike other systems of natural units in that some physical constants are not set to unity but rather set to fixed numerical values that are very close (but not precisely the same) to those in the common SI system of units. Four significant steps were taken in the last half century to increase the precision and utility of measurement units. In 1967 the Thirteenth General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) defined the second of