Physics307L:People/Rosales/My Oscilloscope Lab

=Partner=

=Purpose=
 * Get familiarized with lab procedures and how to keep a proper lab notebook and course page in Openwetware
 * Learn how to operate and read an Oscilloscope, as well as understand some of the advanced functions of the Oscilloscope such as coupling and triggering

=Lab Data= My Lab Notebook Oscilloscope Lab Data - September 1, 2010

=Equipment=


 * Tektronix TDS 1002 Two Channel Digital Storage Oscilloscope
 * Wavetek Power Supply - Model:181
 * BNC Cable

=Lab Summary= This lab required my partner, Matt Cordova, and myself to familiarize ourselves with a digital oscilloscope, as well as the many functions that can be utilized on the oscilloscope to analyze an incoming signal. The first part of the lab called for us to simply adjust the settings on both the oscilloscope and the generator until we obtained a sine waveform on the oscilloscope screen. We were asked to measure by hand, as well as by utilizing the measuring functions on the oscilloscope, the period, the peak-to-peak voltage, and the frequency of a few different waveforms (all of which can be found in the link to my lab notebook under the Lab Data section). This allowed us to become familiar with the different menus that the oscilloscope has, as well as allowed us to learn how to produce different signals with the generator.

Next we tried to learn the concept of triggering by looking through the triggering menu on the oscilloscope, but this did not prove to be any help. We had to ask the TA Katie to explain to us what the oscilloscope was actually doing, and why we call this triggering. A further discussion of triggering can be found in my lab notebook.

The final thing that we got to in this lab was the part about AC coupling and measuring the fall time from our input signal. Again we had to ask Katie and Professor Koch to explain to us what the oscilloscope was displaying when using AC coupling, and how to interpret the fall time. More about what we learned about AC coupling can be found in my lab notebook.

=Calculations and Results=

We were asked to measure the fall time for a signal, ours being a 14.0V square signal with a frequency that was displayed as "<10Hz," which we were told is the time it takes for a signal to drop from its peak voltage to 10% of that peak value. The explanation and the Wikipedia article about fall time helped to clarify what we were measuring. The fall time was measured as follows:


 * Fall Time using cursor function = 58.4ms
 * Fall Time using measure function = 63.31ms


 * $$\tau = RC = 29.66ms $$

Note: The error in our time measurement is +/- 0.01ms for the time using the measure function.

=Conclusions= This lab, although very basic, helped introduce me to the digital oscilloscope. I had never worked with one before, and at the beginning of this lab I did not even know what it was used for. Also, this lab helped me get familiarized with OWW and the expectations of this class.