#48: Basics of Lissajous Patterns on an Oscilloscope

Another "Back to Basics" video: This video takes a fairly detailed look at the basics of Lissajous patterns on an oscilloscope. There are a LOT of videos that show Lissajous patterns on KZbin, but not too many that describe the mechanism behind these patterns. Several of my KZbin viewers have asked for this topic, so here we are. Some low-speed waveforms are used so that the trace movement that draws the Lissajous figures can be seen and understood.

[@iainmackenzieUK]

great movie. as a teacher of physics, I enjoyed your style, clarity and down-to earth approach. great for students. thanks iain

[@danielzdanowicz6899]

You are a really good instructor. Your information is presented in a friendly logical manner and is easy to follow and very well explained and fun to watch. I can easily then go back and compare to my scope. Thank you for putting your time into these topics and the well made videos.

[@jeriellsworth]

This takes me back. I spent hours making lissajous patterns on my homebrew oscope as a kid.

[@aurkom]

I am low key jealous that you had an oscilloscope at home as a kid.

[@shivankitss8396]

@@aurkom that too 8 years back

[@aurkom]

@@shivankitss8396 that too yes

[@tonyclifton265]

yup, me too. I felt so badass Physics ninja when i could make a lissajous figure

[@tomwhipp3245]

the pattern at 9 minutes in can be seen as rotating towards or away from you. if you concentrate enough, you can purposefully switch between the two!

[@billmoran3812]

As a teen, I had the use of a very well equipped electronics lab in the high school ham radio club. I learned about these figures through experiments with signal generators and oscilloscopes. I learned about phase angles etc this way. I have used these concepts all my adult life as an electric utility engineer.

[@ehaaland]

Thank you for this! I'm a first year PhD student studying postural control and instability and we're learning about movements between the hips, knees, and ankles, and how they're coordinated. Many studies have used Lissajous figures as feedback for people to tell them how they're moving. This video really helped me grasp what was happening in reference to 0° and 180° measurements of relative phase between components of the body. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

[@lingcod91]

Great video. This indeed proves: a picture is worth a thousand words. Finally enabled an understanding of Lissajous patterns . . . and how to pronounce them. And no English accents that so many 'bloks' refuse to give up. Before anyone fires hate mail at me, I've spend a lot of time and study comparing their's vs. mine. I love England, but they lost in this category.

[@w2aew]

Well, I don't know if my pronunciation is correct, but it is how I was taught.

[@nelsonwalker7105]

Thank you I love lissajous figures and I just remembered doing these in engineering school back in the mid 1980s and just wanted to relive it for few moments. Thanks for this very informative video.

[@debasmitade3474]

Really helpful , at a frequency difference 4 kHz , the Lissajous patterns look just like a crown ! And it's beautiful to watch .

[@curtvincent3728]

I have not seen this done since college back in the stone age. This is a great refresher! Thanks!

[@evanwolfe2525]

Very Cool Video. My instructor in school pointed me towards looking into what happens when 2 waveforms of close frequency are plotted on the xy axis on an oscilloscope. Your video helped explain the o-scope display. Thanks. Just another ham operator here...Keep It "ReeL",Evan Wolfe

[@drumnotdrum9262]

This is an absolutely crystal clear explanation. Helps me understand some things. Cheers!

[@ovalwingnut]

Dazzling coherent description of lissajous pattern generation. COLOR ME IMPRESSED 🤓 You rock ❤

[@paolonervi2208]

Thank you for the time you dedicate in preparing this tutorial..I found it very useful.They make me come back in my mind all the electronics i've learned when i was young... Thank you again.

[@manvendrasingh5853]

Great Explanation Sir! It was wonderful seeing how you explained everything this quick. Thank you.

[@fredgenius]

Thanks, greight explanation! I used that technique, many years ago when I was repairing guitars - 440Hz in one channel and guitar in the other, to adjust the intonation. Interesting to note, you can see the harmonics dancing around the circle.

[@nuderedfinger]

This video helped me sooooooo much!!!!! I always wondered what the Lissajous phase scopes in my music DAWs meant, and now I finally figured it out thanks to you!!! I know now that it maps stereo phase only, and that a mono signal is simply a vertical line, because both X and Y cancel each other out diagonally to create a vertical line in the middle. A horizontal line is silence. And a diagonal line is a mono signal coming out of only one output between two total. So, one speaker playing, one not, but both being graphed out in the phase scope as X and Y.

[@cjh0751]

Very cool. I've been trying to work out how to make these patterns on my new scope. Thanks for the demonstration.

[@juanmontague7106]

Super educational, thanks for sharing!

[@monkeyxx]

Just got my first Oscilloscope today... looking forward to getting more in depth like this

[@apollonavas1860]

Excellent video, great sound, very well explained, you Sir are a great instructor. Thank you.

[@davidjesse8689]

Your video reminds me of the good old times when I was PMEL tech in my youth... I even caught a glimpse of a Simpson 260 on your bench.

[@WI9LL]

At 8:40 there is an optical illusion similar to the rotating dancer illusion. You may see it rotating vertically or horizontally depending on how you look at it. (also sorry for the random comment, I'm shopping o-scopes for much simpler uses, and stumbled upon this video)

[@ny1t]

Good description as usual. I remember using lissajous patterns for component testing back in the 70s.

[@andybrown3674]

Thank you. Been trying to find this information for over a year.

[@caravanken1]

I am very new to scopes and your wonderful presentation helps me become familiar with the scope and SigGen controls and what they do. I am a ham also and I want to get my Extra but did not want to just bone up on the Q & A's. So, I am opening a new hobby for me into electronics. Thanks for the tutorials and keep them coming.

[@camdflage]

Thanks heaps for this. I'm just an enthusiast, so videos like this one are really helpful and informative.

[@Orcinus24x5]

This function is used to adjust tape heads in reel-to-reel and cassette tape decks, to get the phase between the channels perfectly aligned.

[@chrisingram7277]

Ahhh, I'm just starting to play with a scope for automotive diagnostics and I was curious what the xy function on the scope would have been used for other than fun. Thanks for your older comment:)

[@g0fvt]

As I child I found it was fun creating lissajous figures on an oscilloscope, in adult life they were a superb way to observe frequency errors. One such application was adjusting 5Mhz crystal oscillators used as equipment master oscillators to correlate with the 10Mhz output of a rubidium frequency standard. Although the rubidium standard could be used to clock a frequency counter it becomes tiresome using a counter with a 100s or 1000s gate time in order to achieve the necessary resolution. An excellent video once again.

[@ambarishphysics]

CHECK OUT MY ORIGINAL PROBLEM ON LISSAJOUS PATTERN HERE: kzbin.info/www/bejne/q5qpp3SKZb9osK8

[@Stefan_trekkie]

Every video there is a new scope.. And always a nice ones.. kudos That 90° pattern is what drives AC motors, induction motor in particular

[@donmoore7785]

Great exercise. I troubled through the math of a sequence of L-figures back in the 80's, and enjoyed coming to an understanding of what was going on. I wish I had this equipment at the time to validate my work.

[@ThePhiCode]

just wanted to say thank you cause you`re the only one who made me understand this finally, i needed this for an idea in my B.A project in audio en gineering... you basically saved me

[@adrianacarvajal6212]

Thank you! I really enjoyed the video and actually learned how to do it, how it works and why it works!

[@intotheblue50]

Excellent, first time I,ve really understood it. Thank you.

[@ernavk31]

Excellent tutorial! Just got an XY scope and was only getting "static" (in phase) patterns. You achieved animation by varying one channel's frequency slightly. Can't wait to try it out!

[@mikezike1]

I really enjoy your videos. I always come away learning something, even on topics that I think I know well. Great job, as always! 73 de Mike (K2ZAD)

[@deepakchaudhary6092]

a nice and self explanatory,thanks for this.

[@ivyssauro123]

Great video, very informative, and nice equipment!

[@johnnygogo7773]

This was perfect. Very informative, well explained details, to the point and delivered exceptionally well. Thanks! *** Subscribed *** and 👍

[@michelangelop3923]

Thanks! I am having an experiment for the school and I could figure out what I was doing wrong! This helps a lot!!

[@ebrkic1981]

This is very educational video, tnx for sharing!

[@beingbad1870]

Very Neat and Clear...... Thank you for sharing

[@PeterWMeek]

A favorite pastime - experimenting with lissajous patterns. My father had a polar oscilloscope - a set of secondary deflection "plates" were a center pin (right in the middle of the screen) and a ring around the edge of the circular CRT. The input signal would move the trace towards and away from the center pin. The basic trace was (of course) a lissajous pattern made by a set of 90˚ out-of-phase sine waves on the normal XY deflection plates. I didn't see it among his things, so I suppose something terminal happened to it (maybe the irreplaceable polar CRT died) and it was disposed of. I expect such a display could be synthesized by running the polar input signal into a pair of multipliers - one multiplying the polar input signal with a 0˚-phase X drive-signal and the other multiplying it with a 90˚ phase Y. The outputs of the multipliers would be fed to the X and Y inputs. If my "thought experiment" is right, this should create a circular trace which changes by getting closer to or further from the invisible center by the amount of the polar input. (I leave trace speed and sync as an exercise for the reader.)

[@LestonDr]

I finely understand! Thank you!

[@Antno]

Just bought that oscilloscope can't wait to use it yours looks great

[@whocares.20]

Very good explanations. Was trying to explain this to someone, and fired this video up for them. Worked much better than my explanation, lol.

[@maxpolaris99]

very cool. cant wait for my 2nd bnc cable to come in so I can hook up my 2 channel function generator to my 4 channel scope! Oh boy it's gonna be fun!

[@marcoscruz6107]

loved your video and aproach. i learned a lot, thanks

[@chopper680]

I'm old school, used to calibrate, and test those tekrronic scopes Loved the 400 series

[@Pwaak]

Thank you for this video and sharing your knowledge!

[@aurkom]

This video is evergreen.

[@mrjohhhnnnyyy5797]

Thanks for great educational video! I found the fact that pattern will move if there is phase shift very useful. Because now I can tell if there is phase shift or not with my single channel scope.

[@W1RMD]

Thanks! Great demonstration!

[@dustinhunter6669]

This was a very good explanation of Lissajous patterns. As a college student in a physical chemistry class, this helped quite a bit.

[@arthurmead5341]

What do they use it for in chemistry?

[@elraymaker]

Fantástico !!!! Gracias por tu tiempo !!!

[@mrdouble]

Holy smokes that's too cool. I had no idea what that butting was for. Only that it always made a diagonal line. Thank you

[@mikem0898]

got this topic on my metrology course but we lacked time to cover it properly. it looked like a fun thing to do and watch but i haven't understood it very well. this video made it clear for me. thanks

[@hennypennypoopoo6536]

thank you, I was performing a Michelson interferometer quadrature experiment and I wasn't sure what the signal on the ocilloscope meant. your video was very helpful

[@TheEtbetween]

Thanks, really appreciate it!

[@ajanki34]

That's awesome! I think I have that (x-y) function on my old o-scope, but I got to go see.

[@-riddle-]

Interesting shapes come out after adding AM/FM modulation. For this purpose, I use, for example, a two-channel software function generator on an android phone, which I connect to an oscilloscope.

[@serginietor]

Great! I did this in university last week and didn't really understand it until I saw this video. geez, you should have more views.. thanks!

[@adamwolfram6126]

Nice video. Thanks!

[@riccardoiii9882]

This is just fantastic. I wish you could make it with a stereo input such as a rock song or so. It would be amazing! Thanks

[@effectrode]

This is great - thank you.

[@jrdubois112277]

Great video!

[@robvegart]

This and trying to find out what that Fijian guy said to that American guy who called the wrong number on an AT&T commercial some 30 years ago have now given me closure. Thank you! BTW.... Bula vinaka Lissajous!

[@Fr0zen14]

The company I work for still has this specific scope. Thanks for the video!

[@ThatMontmorency]

The primary purpose of XY (Lissajous) mode on an oscilloscope is to facilitate two-channel phase analysis on a single-beam scope. Single beam was the limiting property of 80s-era CRT scopes. And XY mode was a _lifehack_, intended to work around that limitation when one heeds to work with two channels at once. Today we are no longer limited by "beams" since there are no beams in digital scopes. For most applications we no longer need XY mode. In fact, people realize for many of the former classic XY applications the "multi-beam" XT mode works much better than XY mode. So, Lissajous mode today becomes something of an interesting and entertaining gimmick. It still has its applications, but they are few and far between.

[@Ducktility]

Awesome explanation

[@bobisyouruncle1]

Great explanation.

[@Disillusioned_one]

At college we used to feed 50 hertz in one input and run the time base at 15625 hz then feed a video signal in the z input at the rear of the scope to funky inverted tv picture amazing what you can do with scopes.

[@mangeshmalgi279]

great video. thanks. can you also post a video demonstrating how to measure phase difference by measuring the XY pattern?

[@l-b-g]

excellent video! thanks a lot!

[@JohnRaschedian]

Wow! Great video!

[@RanHam]

I went through an electrical apprenticeship and at one point during ac theory we went in the lab and generated these things on an oscilloscope. But they just gave us directions on how to hook up the scope and what settings to put it on. When I asked the instructor what was I actually seeing on the screen he just replied "a circle." But thanks to you I actually know what the xy mode does. Thanks for posting

[@RODALCO2007]

Excellent demo, you got a new subscriber. I tried to do this at high school many years ago but forgotten how to.

[@isidoroadami5315]

thanks for all explanation.

[@stillpointx2623]

Great explanation!!!

[@thachmonkey]

Such a great instruction :D Thank you very much for the video :) It helps me a lot :)

[@CyberArtem]

Hi ! Great video, i know some precision linear position encoders use Lissajous signals as position output. Can you please explain how they work ? Thanks !

[@StanHemphill]

That Tek 465B brings back memories.

[@PasanKarunanayake]

Thank you very much for the tutorial...

[@jaydekaytv]

Great demo - thx

[@nityaranjandey9437]

good job!!

[@jobinmathew6364]

great class , u r awesome

[@BobWa43]

Great video. Thanks

[@skycarl]

Thanks on another good video. Always interesting. 73

[@mfbbfm]

top video. Thanks a lot

[@user-st2pw7ex6b]

The best 11 min on lissajou figures. Straight to the point

[@Mp4ctsBlain]

Great video

[@rickvia8435]

Not since '70s HS Electronics have I messed w/ Lissajous displays - only briefly then. Thanks for the refresher.

[@glenmartin2437]

Thank you.

[@bitemyshinymetalass7393]

i think i owe you a beer (or two..cases of) . you've got good content.

[@vishalchavda3663]

WOw.... Nice Explanations....

[@Varianna12]

Good--instructive.

[@Cemental]

That's neat! Thanks for breaking it down for us. 73

[@zoolkhan]

another excellent lesson i was able to copy on my really old fleamarket oszilloscope...

[@adoinstru]

thanks a lot to you..really, very helpful.