Meaning & use

oscilloscope

noun·Advanced

An instrument that displays how an electrical signal changes over time as a visual waveform.

See it in a sentence

The technician connected the circuit to an oscilloscope to check the shape of the signal.

Students watched the oscilloscope screen as the sound wave appeared in real time.

A note on using this word

An oscilloscope shows voltage over time as a graph, unlike a multimeter, which gives only a single numeric reading.

Words with a similar meaning

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