What is the smallest change in applied stimulus that will indicate a detectable deflection in a indicating instrument is called?

Resolution:

• Resolution is the ability of the instrument or measurement system to detect and faithfully indicate the small changes in the characteristics of the measurement result.
• Let’s assume the resolution is denoted by ‘δ’. ∴ A small δ implies good resolution and a large δ implies poor resolution.
• Since Resolution is the smallest output that we can detect in the scale with clarity, we need high-resolution instruments, so that they can’t lose accuracy.

Important Notes:

Accuracy: It is the degree of closeness with which the reading approaches the true value of the quantity to be measured.

Precision: It is the measure of reproducibility i.e., given a fixed value of a quantity, precision is a measure of the degree of agreement within a group of measurements.

• The precision of an instrument does not guarantee accuracy.
• An instrument with more significant figures has more precision.
• The deflection factor is reciprocal of sensitivity.

Sensitivity: It is defined as the ratio of the changes in the output of an instrument to a change in the value of the quantity being measured. It denotes the smallest change in the measured variable to which the instrument responds.

Deflection factor or inverse sensitivity is the reciprocal of sensitivity.