Question: I always see voltmeters connected in parallel with a component, but what happens if you connect it in series? I think it's due to the high resistance of a voltmeter but I don't *really* see why this would be a problem: It just means that the current going through the circuit is shifted down a level, but all things remain the same right? (Sorry if this is wrong, I just started learning circuits.)

Thanks

Note: I already saw [this](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/143204/why-are-ammeters-used-in-series-and-voltmeters-in-parallel) but I didn't understand the explanations there.

Answer: 
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> ... but what happens if you connect it in series?
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Consider a circuit which has a 3-V (ideal) battery connected in series with a 100-$\Omega$ and a 200-$\Omega$ resistor (series resistors). The voltage across the 100-$\Omega$ resistor will be 1 V, and across the 200-$\Omega$, 2 V.

Next, connect a 1 M$\Omega$ resistor (a voltmeter) in parallel with the the 100-$\Omega$ resistor. The voltage across both of these resistors will be approximately 1 V because they are in parallel and must have the same voltage as each other, and the effective resistance of this parallel combination has changed to 99.99 $\Omega$ -- not much. The voltage across the 200-$\Omega$ resistor is still very close to 2 V.

Finally, change the 1 M$\Omega$ resistor to be in series with the 100-$\Omega$ and 200-$\Omega$ resistors. Now the 3 V will be divided between the series resistors, because the total across series resistances must add to the total of the battery in this circuit. Larger resistances will have the larger voltages, so the voltmeter will read slightly less than 3 V, but the voltage across the 100-$\Omega$ resistor is only $3\times 10^{-4}$ V and across the 200-$\Omega$ resistor is $6\times 10^{-4}$ V. You just dramatically changed how the circuit behaved.
@Jdeep - the voltmeter should read close to the output potential of the cell/battery, assuming the other components in the circuit have a total resistance that is significantly smaller than that of the voltmeter (which is the case a lot of the time, given the large typical resistance of a voltmeter).