re dumb question function generator in article c j b murdoch acc virginia edu dgj y kelvin seas virginia edu david glen jacobowitz writes i have a new scope and i thought i d save a few bucks by buying one with a function generator built in hmm now where was that ad for the combination radio hand cranked generator flashlight siren i saw function generator has a mv offset and the amplitude s too high is there any way i could make myself a little box that could solve this little problem the box would tkae the function generator input lower the voltage and give an output impedance that is some low unchanging number i would want to lower the voltage by a factor of one hundred or so i could just build a little buffer amp but i d like to have this box not be active sure you ve already got the right idea ignoring the ohm internal resistance of the generator for a second just run it into say a voltage divider made of ohms in series with ohms this new circuit is the thevenin equivalent of one that puts out of the original voltage and has an output impedence of negligibly less than ohms you may want to monkey with the values a little depending on whether you care more about the exact dividing ratio or the availability of parts hows that sound joel kolstad p s this is why those high voltage probes for multimeters can be accurate but still cheap they have something like megs in series with k which doesn t load the often high impedence source much as well as keeping the probably meg impedance multimeter happy
