30April2014

Studying the Oscilloscope

 The plates on a oscilloscope help us direct the electron beam. In this photo we are analyzing the way the length of the plate, and distance between the plates affect the acceleration of the electron flowing through it.  

Oscilloscope Controls

Intensity Control: Brightness

Focus: Focuses the beam

Time/Div: controls how fast the beam moves across the screen per division. 

Measuring The Voltage with a Oscilloscope. 

Here a oscilloscope was used to determine the voltage produced by the battery which was 1.5 V. We learned that with a switch and changing between the ground and DC current we could determine the voltage produced by a battery.  

Measuring Wave Forms

A frequency generator was connected to the channel1 input with a frequency of 96Hz. The period is determined to be t=(6*0.002)=0.012s. Period calculated from the frequency generator t=1/96Hz=0.0104 which is very close to the estimated value of the period from the oscilloscope. 

Switching to the AC/DC button and setting it to the triangle wave produced this pattern.

Here is the result of the upper triangular wave. 

This is the result of the square wave. 

Oscilloscope with DC andAC Power Supply

For this DC power supply it was extremely difficult to determine the amplitude and the frequency. But we  determined the amplitude to be around 30mV. We were not sure how to determine the frequency of this wave because we were not sure how to determine where the wave begins and ends effectively with this method. 

This is a cosine wave that was produced from a AC power supply. The sinusoidal wave made it easier to determine the amplitude, period and frequency.  The Amplitude was determined to be 15V, the period t=(8.5*.002)=0.017s, and the frequency f=1/t=1/0.017= 58.8Hz. 

Liassajous Figures using AC Transformers

We set the function generator to 60Hz connected to channel1 and the AC transformer to the channel2 input. A circle is produced. Lets compare this to half the frequency input. 

We set the function generator to 30Hz connected to channel1 and the AC transformer to the channel2 input. This twisted shaped appear on the screen. This appears to 1/2 of the frequency of the circle above at 60Hz twists the circle to create two circles 

Mystery Box Experiment:

Red/Black and Red/Green and Red/Blue Produced 

Red/Black and Red/Green Produced the same square wave with a A=1.25V and a period for Red/Black t=0.004s, and Red/Green t=0.004s

Black/Yellow and Red/yellow also produced the same wave with a resultant period of 4ms and amplitude .5V. 

 Finally the Black/Green and Black/Blue and Blue/Green also produced a odd wave as summarized in the table below. 

We couldn't conclude what the mystery box is made of but it does have alot of similar wave produced.