How To Read A Vernier Caliper

Very accurately, quite small things, you can read in 3 different ways with it. You can measure outside something like that, then you read the scale. You can measure between things like that or you can measure the depth of a hole.

You push it down until it hits the bottom, then slide the body down. Either way, the 3 reading parts, they all move together. So, it's any one scale to read and that's the tricky bit.

And it's very small and very fine. Okay, you've got a scale here, which is notched in centimeters, which is divided up into individual millimetres and you've got another scale here, and you'll see that the numbers on this scale actually don't really line up, see the 4 isn't lined up with anything opposite. The 0 is.

The 10 is. They sort of go out of phase and back in again. If you put it in a certain position, let's say there, when the 0 is lined up with the 1, that's 1 centimeter, 10 millimeters exactly.

Just right there, the 0 is lined up with 0, it's nothing, 0 millimeters. If you go to there, see? Now, the 0 is halfway between the naught and the 1. We could guess that that is half a millimeter, but you can actually look.

When the 5 is at half a millimeter, when the 5 line is lined up with something, that's half a millimeter. See how the 2 line isn't. We can move along.

That's naught millimeters, and the 1 is in line with the 1, which almost is - and now it is 1 millimeter. We have only a bit more, so that the 2's lined up, now opened by .2 millimeters.

So, the 7's to the way away, let's line the 7 up with the next line along to the right. Got to get it there, it's very fine. That gap is .

7 millimeters. The 10's lined up for the next line; the 0 is too. You're actually on one millimeter now.

Alright, let's say to measure this on the outside. You measure it between the two corners. Let's see what it says.

First of all, you look at the 0, then you look at the number to the left of it. This one is 60 millimeters. So that's 60 millimeters and a bit.

Now, you look along to find which of these lines is lined up with one of these. You see here, it's a bit to the right, and that one is lined up. So it's 3.

5, or actually .35. So it's 60.

35 millimeters, that measuring there. You can measure inside a gap. Let's do these 2 here.

And again, look for the 0 and that says 44 millimeters. The 0 is a little bit to the right of that number there. And we'll look through and we'll see actually that one there is just about on.

So that's 44.15 millimeters. We'll do a hole, again.

Let's do a shallow one this time. Okay again, the 0 is at 3. If you look, you'll find it's actually a little to the left of 3, so it's a little bit less than 3.

If you look over here, you'll find that the 9 is in line, so that's actually 2.9 millimeters. And that's how you measure with a vernier caliper. .