Does Reversing Battery Terminals Affect a Potential Divider Circuit?

[uzair_ha91]

I've seen some images of potential dividers in which the battery terminals are reversed, e.g. the normal case is this::
http://www.antonine-education.co.uk/New_items/DIG/Potential_Divider.gif
So will it still work if the battery terminals were reversed here and input voltage goes directly to R₂ and the voltmeter combination instead of going across R₁? (i.e. the current goes to R2 first and then R1 where we calculate the output voltage) Please explain!

 

[TurtleMeister]

It depends on the voltmeter. If it can read both positive and negative voltages then it will work just fine. Otherwise, you would need to reverse the voltmeter connection whenever you reverse the battery connection.