why short the leads of a piezo together for shipping ?
I always try to twist the bare leads of a piezo together before mailing a kit, especially if the piezo is put in the same bag as the rest of the kit. bare leads twisted together (left side) Why ? As seen here a piezo sounder is not only a speaker but can also function as a microphone: waveform of me yelling into a piezo And as seen here, if a piezo is rapped on a bench top it'll generate a substantial voltage of over 20 volts - don't want that applied to static sensitive parts. waveform of piezo brought down hard on bench AND, the piezo is a highly capacitive part, seen here measuring 63 nF (or .063 uF) the piezo measured at 63 nF , we don't want whatever charge is stored on that capacitor to be discharged into the other kit parts. Is shorting the leads together effective ? I dunno, but most mechanical meter movements are stored/shipped with their terminals shorted together (also some VOMs have an off position that does the shorting), I figure it can't hurt to do the...