agilent 33220a why cant it obtain a 24 dB output

I am going to school for electronic technology communications I have currently just started my first electronics communication class at matc in milwaukee wisconsin in our 1st lab we were to get familiar with using are test equiptment one being the agilent 33220a waveform generator we were suppose to set mem 1 at a freq of 100 khz no modulation with a output of 24 dBm but we could only set it to 23.98 dBm our instructor wants to know why we cant set it to 24 dB I went on line and got the data sheet for the agilent 33220a but the only thing i could see in there (and i am not sure was amplitude flatness at < 100 khz it is .1dB but 23.98dBm is only .02 dB less than 24 dBm so i do not think this is the answer can any one help me

Everything has tolerances, the difference there should be well within those tolerances - in any case, how do you know it's only 23.98dBm?.

To steal a quote from an old lecturer of mine, only people who don't know what they are talking about talk in dB's!.

The solution to this problem is all contained in the specifications for the 33220a.

The output is a maximum of 10 volts peak to peak into a 50 ohm load.
Go do the maths and convert that to dBm and you will see why.

JimB

Is your meter calibrated?

You never know it might actually be outputting 24.02dBm.