Oscilloscope Essay

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The word oscilloscope is a word that combines from Latin and Greek language. The first part “oscillare” derives from the Latin words meaning to swing backwards and forwards. The second part comes from Classical Greek “skopein” means to observe, aim at, examine, from which developed the Latin ending “scopium”, which has been used to form names for instruments that enable the eye or ear to make observation.
An oscilloscope is a laboratory instrument that commonly used to display and analyze the waveform of electronic signals. This device draws a graph of signal voltage as a function of time. Oscilloscope usually have two-dimensional graph which electrical potential differences represent by Y-axis (vertical) and time represent by X-axis (horizontal). With positive values going upward and negative values going downward (Ask.com, 2014). In any oscilloscope, the horizontal sweep is measured in seconds per division (s/div), milliseconds per division (ms/div), microseconds per division (s/div), or nanoseconds per division (ns/div). The vertical deflection is measured in volts per division (V/div), millivolts per division (mV/div), or microvolts per division (µV/div).
The oldest form of oscilloscope, still used in some labs today, is known as the cathode-ray oscilloscope. It produces an image by the focused electron beam to travel in patterns across the face of cathode ray tube (CRT). More modern oscilloscopes electronically replicate the action of the CRT using a liquid crystal display (liquid crystal display) like the one that can be found on notebook computers screen.

Oscilloscope is acquainted as one of the most helpful instrument for testing circuits. It is able to show the signals at different points in the circuit. One way to inves...

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...show a decreasing value of 5V.

Last but not least, for Ritika,Preeti and Prem (2013), they are using Freeduino board and solder the component on that board. They are using compiler Arduino 1.0 for uploading the codes to the board, MAX 232 Line Driver, ATmega328 and other components. The reason for they are using Freeduino is that Freeduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software and Freeduino projects can be standalone or they can communicate with software running on a computer (e.g. Flash, Matlab, Processing, MaxMS ). The wave plot also can be in form of sine and square wave form.
However, same with Ruisantos, Ritika, Preeti and Prem oscilloscope project could not read negative voltage. Besides, they didn’t include the calculation of frequency, rise time and time period to be displayed on the PC.

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