yes a resister lowers voltage by turning the energy into heat.. You can use a ohm meter but you need to know the specs of it, but I don't know how to do it that way.. But , yes you can apply the cars/bat volt to one side and measure the difference coming out of the other side to see if your getting the desired lower voltage for your component.
Thanks. Just so I'm clear on this...let's say I put 12 volts into one side of the resistor, I should get maybe 8-9 volts out of the other side. Is that correct? I realize we are using rough numbers, but I'm trying to get a handle on this. I have a guy saying you can get 12 volts out of both sides of a resistor and it working (same with a resistor wire). He says you have to check the ohms, because that's all you care about.
I'm just trying to get a grasp on this.