Using an online virtual oscilloscope

If you are teaching a course that includes sound or alternating currents, you should teach your students to use an oscilloscope. Yet mastering the use of oscilloscope can take several hours of independent study, and oscilloscopes are generally large and expensive, which makes it unlikely that students will take them home. Fortunately, there are free online virtual oscilloscopes that can come to the rescue; these enable students to learn almost all the essential features of a real oscilloscope. In this article, I describe how best to interface with a virtual oscilloscope, suggest some sample lab experiments, and explore the limitations and the possibilities of these devices. For teachers looking for some authentic distance learning opportunities, this is pretty much as good as it gets.