Friday, 21 April 2017

50 hertz sine wave in oscilloscope when I touch it




I bought a new PicoScope USB oscilloscope and noticed that when I touch the tip of the probe with my hand I see a 50 Hz signal of 2 volts on the screen. What is causing this? (Or rather, how is the mains 50 Hz sine wave getting through me to the scope?)



Answer



There is a small capacitance between you and the power network. Also there is another, different capacitance between scope's ground and power network. Input impedance is high enough, usually 1Mohm, so you create a kind of voltage divider between power network, oscilloscope's probe and it's ground.


This is a purely capacitive phenomenon. Calling it an "antenna" is a bit misleading and is not any better than others slogans.


No comments:

Post a Comment

arduino - Can I use TI's cc2541 BLE as micro controller to perform operations/ processing instead of ATmega328P AU to save cost?

I am using arduino pro mini (which contains Atmega328p AU ) along with cc2541(HM-10) to process and transfer data over BLE to smartphone. I...