my dad seriously just brought home an actual oscilloscope

[ursus]

This is way cooler than the wire screen shit I made with a sine gate and a timer.

[Sabb]

What is it? ;_;

[Rocket50]

Wait, why?

[ursus]

What is it? ;_;

It's a giant box that displays waveforms.

Have you ever seen one of those simple wiremod contraptions that just displays a circle that goes around and around on the screen?
This is that in real life, except it makes waveforms instead of circles.

[Shawn]

What is it? ;_;

scilloscopes are commonly used to observe the exact wave shape of an electrical signal. In addition to the amplitude of the signal, an oscilloscope can show distortion, the time between two events (such as pulse width, period, or rise time) and relative timing of two related signals.

[ursus]

scilloscopes are commonly used to observe the exact wave shape of an electrical signal. In addition to the amplitude of the signal, an oscilloscope can show distortion, the time between two events (such as pulse width, period, or rise time) and relative timing of two related signals.

Translation:
It's a 30-pound box that makes lines.

[Shawn]

Translation:
It's a 30-pound box that makes lines.

Basically Lol so why did he bring one home?

[Mr. Franklin]

looks nice... how much was it?

[ursus]

It was free, he was fixing someone's water heater and saw it in the corner. he asked if they used it, they said no, he took it home.

[Xrain]

scilloscopes are commonly used to observe the exact wave shape of an electrical signal. In addition to the amplitude of the signal, an oscilloscope can show distortion, the time between two events (such as pulse width, period, or rise time) and relative timing of two related signals.

It's a Voltmeter that is able to show volts as a function of time. But yes it can be used for all of those functions. But it looks like his is only a single channel oscilloscope so you can only view a signal source at a time.

These are close ones I use in my classes pretty frequently. (Its just a model newer or so, same functionality)




Nice work for getting that oscilloscope for free, but I probably wouldn't spend money on one like that, as for a bit more you can getter a higher-quality with more functionality.

A nice thing about lab equipment tho, a scope from 20 years ago works almost as good as a brand new one from today, old ones just cant perform as many math functions, or print images to usb key.

[blαh2355]

Wait lol, you just quoted yourself.

To OP: What's a practical use for it...

[Xrain]

Wait lol, you just quoted yourself.

To OP: What's a practical use for it...

Clicked quote instead of modify 

To answer you question, electrical circuit development. You can't see what electrons are doing when you build a circuit, so an oscilloscope is the electrical engineering equivalent of a microscope. Lets you see how the circuit is behaving.