I put the little germanium (3mm thick) piece in there. Very shiny.
At 1 MHz it reads ~3.4k ohms (OCR = ~25k). At 50MHz it reads 600 ohms, and the open circuit reading of the test fixture is 2k ohms. Going higher makes the full scale OC reading low and its probobly not correct for measuring such a high resistance. The unit shows negative inductance (so its capacitance) for the sample.
the sample is 3mm thick, 4mm wide and like 50mm tall.
The OCR of the IA goes down with F going up (this seems like a general thing IA do). Without the test fixture (floating apc7) the OCR is generally higher. I guess its related to loading.
so, what is going on with this measurement results?
metals had the general tendency to increase resistance with frequency. Copper penny (copper coated zinc) increased by a tiny bit. The gauge block increased by alot.. germanium is doing the opposite. The relative permeability of germanium is in the same ball park as steel (fractional). I can't go to the higher frequencies with it unless I had a thinner sample with lower resistance, so its within the machine operating range.
As a side note, yesterday when I apply deoxit gold (with a brush) to the fixture and wipe it off with the chamois wipe, the short circuit resistance was pretty much the same as if I just cleaned it with alcohol. Today when I turned the machine on, it was very low (20 miliohms). Might be related to temperature and run time, or maybe it did something.
Oh I see the machine gives funny readings for L for some reason with the fixture (if it shows L or C negative switch modes)? I guess it just makes sense that the capacitance of the sample is conducting the HF energy better then the conduction of the sample. It behaves the same as a ceramic composition resistor (I found a 4kOhm ceramic comp resistor, it also reads much lower at a higher frequency like the germanium sample does, and also reads capacitance early on).
Is this right?
SO I guess steel is the more interesting material. Germanium is the same as a bulk resistor. I guess steel is kind of like a inductor/ferrite even with no coil.
Maybe I should try to graph sweeps of materials, that might be fun and interesting. I can try different coins too.
What else can I put in the impedance analyzer? I think I have some pure graphite sheet, titanium, piece of carpenters pencil. Preparing some kind of samples of gallium and mercruy would be interesting too (I can fill a thin silicone tube with the metal, probobly not mercury, and plug the ends with slugs of copper wire, to make a sealed low impedance 'resistor' without having to deal with trying to make glass metal seals). Maybe electrolyte liquids can be done in the same way, if the right end caps are chosen. 0.2cc of nitric acid?
if the DC bias max was a bit higher I would think neon tube. But its only 40V.. mod the unit to accept higher voltage ?