Overview
In this experiment an oscilloscope will be used to study the time dependence of current in RL, RC and RLC series circuits. A square wave voltage generator is used to simulate a “switch”, turning an emf on and off. This causes exponential saturation and/or decay in the RL and RC circuits, while damped oscillatory behavior is observed in the RLC circuit. An oscilloscope is connected to probe voltage as a function of time. For the RC and RL circuits, the voltage is taken across the resistor where the vR = IR, whereas the voltage is taken across the capacitor (vC = Q/C) in the RLC circuit. It is important to note the generator itself has a 50 resistance to the actual “R” is R+50.