Oscilloscope facts for kids

An oscilloscope is a cool electronic tool. People often call it a scope or O-scope for short. It helps you see how electrical signals change over time. Imagine you have a small electronic device, like a timer. If you want to see the exact signal it's making, you can plug it into an oscilloscope.

The oscilloscope shows you a picture, like a graph, on its screen. This graph usually has two parts: the up-and-down line shows the electrical voltage, and the side-to-side line shows time. So, you can watch how the voltage goes up and down as time passes.

What an Oscilloscope Looks Like

An oscilloscope usually looks like a box with a screen. It has many plugs for connecting wires, and lots of knobs and buttons on the front. These controls let you change how the signal looks on the screen.

To help you measure things, the screen has a special grid drawn on it. This grid is called a graticule. Each square on the graticule is called a division. This helps you easily figure out the voltage or time of the signal you are looking at.

Images for kids

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  This picture shows the inside of an older type of oscilloscope screen, called a cathode ray tube.

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  A Tektronix 475A portable analog oscilloscope from the late 1970s.

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  A simple diagram showing the parts of an oscilloscope.

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  The special tube inside an oscilloscope that creates the display.

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  A computer model showing what happens when you change the time setting on an oscilloscope.

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  A popular Tektronix 465 analog oscilloscope.

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  A 24-hour clock displayed on an oscilloscope.

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  A computer model showing how the signal "sweeps" across the oscilloscope screen.

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  Cool patterns called Lissajous figures on an oscilloscope.

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  Another example of a Lissajous figure on an analog oscilloscope.

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  An oscilloscope can be used as a vectorscope to check TV signals.

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  A modern digital oscilloscope watching a power circuit.

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  A PicoScope 6000 digital oscilloscope using a laptop computer for its display.

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  An oscilloscope showing a heterodyne signal.

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  An oscilloscope showing unwanted AC hum in a sound signal.

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  An oscilloscope showing a mix of low and high frequency signals.

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  An oscilloscope showing a bad filter on a sine wave.

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  A dual-trace oscilloscope showing two different signals at different time settings.

See also

In Spanish: Osciloscopio para niños