Why do they want me to wire pot this way?

[DickFreed]

Was looking ahead at upcoming labs for school and can’t quite understand why they have the pot shorted from one lead to the wiper. I figured I could do it simpler. What I did, I drew as a schematic above the official one in the book as pictured. I tested it with my meter, and got same results as the books method in terms of resistance and current. https://imgur.com/a/ndDHxyB

 

[Harald Kapp]

got same results as the books method in terms of resistance and current.

And right so.
Why is the other end of the potentiometer usually connected to the wiper in this kind of circuit? Consider the action of the wiper when you turn the knob, moving the wiper along the resistive track: neither wiper nor track are perfectly smooth. Therefore when moving the wiper will "hop" across the ridges and valleyas of the track. This can cause short interruptions of the contact between wiper and track -> infinite resistance. When the end of the potentiometer is connected to the wiper, the resistance will be finite during these short periods. The same applies when the wiper loses contact permanently, e.g. du eto ageing.
See e.g. this article.

 

[DickFreed]

And right so.
Why is the other end of the potentiometer usually connected to the wiper in this kind of circuit? Consider the action of the w
See e.g. this article.

Makes perfect sense. Much appreciated.