"Thomas G. Marshall" . com writes:
If I connect an ammeter (from my handy multimeter) to a battery,
what is it measuring? The amount of amps allowed to pass through
the wires, etc. of the multimeter?

If you connect an ideal battery to an ideal ammeter, it will read
infinite amps.

However, the battery has internal resistance, wires have some
resistance, the ammeter has internal resistance.

So if you connect a real battery to a real ammeter, you get the
battery's voltage divided by the actual total resistance
(Rbatt+Rwire+Rmeter).

A battery which can only provide 1mA would have a high internal
resistance, perhaps 3000 ohms. A car battery can provide hundreds of
amps at 12v, closer to 0.1 ohms.

If it depends entirely on load, then why wouldn't the ammeter always
measure the same regardless of what I connect it to?

In normal circuits, the resistance of the battery is negligible.
You're making up abnormal circuits, so it isn't. Plus, amps depends
on the volts as well; for a *given* battery, the amps depends on the
load. For *all* batteries, it also depends on the voltage of the
load. V=IR, as long as you account for all those tiny internal
resistances.