Hi, it's mythbusting time again. Why? Because every time I do a video measuring something on one of these blue anetic work mats I get a whole bunch of email, whole bunch of comments people saying oh, that's why it's affecting your measurement and if you probe through, it'll be conductive and it'll upset everything. And you shouldn't be measuring stuff on these blue antithetic work mats. Well, that's complete bollocks.

There's nothing wrong with doing that. They don't affect your measurement at all unless you're doing something bleeding edge critical where you're fart halfway across the room in affection measurement. These don't do a thing and I'll prove it. Let's go now.

I've talked about these work mats before, but for people who have missed the video, this is a dedicated video for this. What I've got here is a blue, antistatic or static dissipative uh workm. It's a rubber work matat. They come in two basic types.

This is the high quality, really expensive rubber one. This is the cheaper antistatic uh, PVC type, uh mat and the differences are that these are much more durable and uh, they are heat resistant and you will not burn through them with a soldering iron. You won't cut through them. I've demonstrated that in another video so I won't actually repeat that.

And these cheaper ones, they burn through and they cut and all sorts of things and these don't have a conductive backing on it, they're just anti-static And they're okay. They do the job as an antistatic mat, but for work as an actual workm, these things are much better. And these actually have a very conductive rubber backing on them with a static dissipative worktop on them. And let's do some measurements to see if they actually affect anything and you'll find that they won't.

I'm using my agilant meter here and this goes up to 300 megga Ohms. So let's probe one of these PVC mats here and you'll see that is's absolutely nothing. Okay, it's it's greater than 300 Megga Ohms. Not surprising cuz it's static dissipative.

And also these blue work mats. It doesn't matter where you put it how close you put them together, it's greater than 300 Meg At this particular Uh voltage. the very low voltage low current put out by the meter. Okay, but if we measure the bottom of this one here, we get also get nothing because it's these are not a conductive backing.

they're just an anti-static backing. but the backing on these blue rubber ones is actually conductive. I'll put it say 10 mm apart. There you go and it's under 100 around about 100K or less depending on how much pressure you put in there.

But these are actually a conductive backing and no, you cannot Actually Pierce Incred Look: I'm putting a lot of force in these test points. Trust me and I cannot Pierce that with these super duper Sharp brand new Point test probes and you can actually see the Mark I've left in there. That's how much force I put on the thing. So when people are saying there it is there okay I couldn't Pierce that.

So when people are saying oh, you'll accidentally Pierce through uh, your pins will pierce through and get the conductive back in. No, they don't. These are incredibly tough mats. So these people who thought in my Giian resistor video that that was actually affecting my measurements when I was probing it doesn't I cannot.

There's no way I can probe that with these sharp little Crown test points on there, let alone my multimeter probes. Okay, it does absolutely nothing. And as for my previous video where where I reviewed the Agilant u1272a meter, a lot of people were saying that the capacitor measurement was affected because I was probing the surface directly and it makes no difference. There's my capacitor 99.3 paa farads.

Okay, I'll measure it in free air like this. Okay, and there we go. It's no good. and just probing the surface of the mat down here makes no difference at all.

And let's take my good LCR meter here. The Agilant: Okay, and I've got it on 120 hertz measurement frequency. It's down near 04 and actually when I just hold the act of holding these leads makes it go up a bit. But I'll probe.

Actually, you can't see that. I'll probe the mat down the bottom here and you'll see that like my fingers are off. Okay, and that's a reading I Put it on the mat and it doesn't affect it at all. all.

right. So how does frequency affect it? I've got it now set to 100 khz test frequency. okay and I'll hold these probes with my Um pliers so that I don't or introduce less capacitance due to my body. Okay, and it's I've put one down there.

put the positive one on and it's reading 83 Paa Farads I put the other one down. it's reading3 Look, it's practically not going up at all. Even if I reduce it, it's It's absolutely minuscule. It's tiny and there there appears to be a little tiny change in capacitance.

There, a little residual charge and then it settles. Then it settles down. So it's like unless you're working on something absolutely super duper critical. This does nothing.

and I don't know whether or not that effect is actually the mat or my pliers actually doing that and my body still cuz if I take these in free air see, it's already jumped up. It's already just jumping all over the place. So you know you'd really have to do some serious critical probing measurements to prove that this mat even did anything at all down at this you know level of, you know, less than uh one peaka Farad. It's crazy.

It just has no effect at all in most practical circuits. So can we actually try and measure the resistance of this map? Well, I've got my fluke here in conductance uh mode which measures 0 001 Nano Sean resolution and allows us to measure very high resistances. So let's try and do it. This is very touchy.

These are this sort of measurement very susceptible to noise. Very tricky. Okay, so we're probably getting yeah, we're already getting a residual across there by just me using these pliers and holding that if I let it go. look at that.

Okay, so really, this is, uh, quite tricky I'm afraid maybe I'll just resort to using my fingers and maybe null it out. Perhaps I don't know. Um, anyway, let's put it down on the mat say 10 mm apart and let's say that change is jumping from. well, let's try and re it out, shall we? It's a bit hard, but anyway, it's it's going to be near enough to that and let's say it's.

3 Nan Seens for argument sake 4 Depends. let's go out here out here. Very very close together. bit more pressure, more pressure helps.

So what's 3 Nan Seens? Well, all you do is invert it on your calculator. So 0.3 Nano Seamans like that and we inverted bang. We're talking 3.3 GMS And if you want one Nano Seamen like that, you invert that on the calculator. Yeah, you're still talking 1 gig.

Ohm resistance. These things are incredibly High It'll be dependent on upon voltage and all sorts of stuff like that. but you know you're talking many, many gigs resistance for these mats. And here's a test which is a little bit better.

I've got two, uh, separate panav vises here and the weight of the panav vises actually puts it down on the surface. So if I re out that, let's oh, it's you know it's very touchy down at this level. Okay, but I'm pretty happy with that and let's put it down there. you go: 350 Nano semen.

And in case you're wondering, these cheap PVC mats are actually, uh, a bit better than the, uh, better quality blue, um, rubberized mats. Let's check it out. There you go about 04 Nano Seans and that's about 25 gigs and that's just under 3 gigs. So there you go: I Hope I've proven that these mats really don't affect your circuit All all unless you're working on something super duper critical.

So please, no more comments on the videos when I measure stuff on these antistatic workm mats. They're perfectly fine. They're designed to do this sort of thing. Catch you next time.