Editing Potentiometer (section)

== Applications ==
Potentiometers are rarely used to directly control significant amounts of power (more than a watt or so). Instead they are used to adjust the level of analog signals (for example [[loudness|volume]] controls  [[audio equipment]]), and as control inputs for electronic circuits. For example, a light [[dimmer]] uses a potentiometer to control the switching of a [[TRIAC]] and so indirectly to control the brightness of lamps.

Preset potentiometers are widely used throughout electronics wherever adjustments must be made during manufacturing or servicing.

User-actuated potentiometers are widely used as user controls, and may control a very wide variety of equipment functions. The widespread use of potentiometers in consumer electronics declined in the 1990s, with rotary [[incremental encoder]]s, up/down [[push-button]]s, and other digital controls now more common. However they remain in many applications, such as volume controls and as position sensors.

=== Audio control ===
[[File:Faders.jpg|thumb|right|Slide potentiometers ([[Fade (audio engineering)#Fader|faders]])]]

Low-power potentiometers, both slide and rotary, are used to control audio equipment, changing loudness, frequency attenuation, and other characteristics of audio signals.

The 'log pot', which is a potentiometer that has a resistance, taper, or, "curve" (or law) of a logarithmic (log) form, is used as the volume control in [[audio power amplifier]]s, where it is also called an "audio taper pot" because the [[amplitude]] response of the human [[ear]] is approximately logarithmic. It ensures that on a volume control marked 0 to 10, for example, a setting of 5 sounds subjectively half as loud as a setting of 10. There is also an ''anti-log pot'' or ''reverse audio taper'' which is simply the reverse of a logarithmic potentiometer. It is almost always used in a ganged configuration with a logarithmic potentiometer, for instance, in an audio balance control.

Potentiometers used in combination with filter networks act as [[Tone control circuit|tone controls]] or [[Equalization (audio)|equalizers]].

In audio systems, the word linear is sometimes applied in a confusing way to describe slide potentiometers because of the straight line nature of the physical sliding motion. The word linear, when applied to a potentiometer regardless of being a slide or rotary type, describes a linear relationship of the pot's position versus the measured value of the pot's tap (wiper or electrical output) pin.

=== Television ===
Potentiometers were formerly used to control picture brightness, contrast, and color response.  A potentiometer was often used to adjust "vertical hold", which affected the synchronization between the receiver's internal sweep circuit (sometimes a [[multivibrator]]) and the received picture signal, along with other things such as audio-video carrier offset, tuning frequency (for push-button sets) and so on. It also helps in frequency modulation of waves.

=== Motion control ===
Potentiometers can be used as position feedback devices in order to create [[closed-loop control]], such as in a [[servomechanism]]. This method of motion control is the simplest method of measuring the angle or displacement.

=== Transducers ===
Potentiometers  are also very widely used as a part of [[displacement (vector)|displacement]] [[transducer]]s because of the simplicity of construction and because they can give a large output signal.

===Computation===
In [[analog computer]]s, high precision potentiometers are used to scale intermediate results by desired constant factors, or to set [[initial condition]]s for a calculation. A motor-driven potentiometer may be used as a [[function generator]], using a non-linear resistance card to supply approximations to trigonometric functions. For example, the shaft rotation might represent an angle, and the voltage division ratio can be made proportional to the cosine of the angle.