On May 15, 8:07*pm, TimR wrote:
On May 15, 7:40*pm, Sjouke Burry s@b wrote:



A bad contact somewhere?

Not sure that makes sense.

Pulling a current across a resistance, like from a bad connection,
should cause a voltage drop. *But *no-load open circuit should be full
voltage.

You were pulling a current through that circuit and
it had two resistances in it. One presumably was the
light bulb, otherwise measuring from terminal to
terminal of the open switch should not read anything..
The other resistance is that of the multimeter itself.
How much of the 120V in the circuit appears
across the bulb and how much across
the multimeter is proportional to their resistance.
I would expect the multimeter to have such a high
resistance that you'd read close to 120V. But with
a CFL presented with a tiny current, not able to light,
who knows what that resistance/impedance is.