Today in a lab I learned that an electrical current that runs an oscillator can have a frequency of 20 hz but the oscillator can vibrate twice for every cycle of the current (making the oscillator vibrate at 40 hz). HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? Please explain.

Question

anonymous · Answer

what kind of oscillator is this? opamp?

anonymous · Answer

its because electronic circuit  oscillators are designed to produce a repetitive,oscillating electronic signals such as sine wave, square wave etc.It can be linear or non linear, harmonics or non harmonic frequencies..
Oscillators designed to produce a high-power AC output from a DC supply are usually called inverter..
An audio oscillator produces frequencies in the audio range, about 16 Hz to 20 kHz....
A low-frequency oscillator (LFO) is an electronic oscillator that generates a frequency below ≈20 Hz. This term is typically used in the field of audio synthesizers, to distinguish it from an audio frequency oscillator.

hope that helps...

anonymous · Answer

well we attached a string to it, it was actually an AC power frequency higher than 20 but i forget off the top of my head. all i remember is that the oscillator vibrated twice for every cycle that the ac power made to the oscillator.

anonymous · Answer

we collected data and solved for the frequency of the waves on the string, which ended up being 2 times that of the power frequency