High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A relaxation oscillator is an oscillator based upon the relaxation behavior of a physical system. That is, a dynamical system within the oscillator continuously dissipates its internal energy. Normally the system would return to its natural equilibrium; however, each time the system reaches some threshold sufficiently close to its equilibrium, a mechanism disturbs it with additional energy. Hence, the oscillator's behavior is characterized by long periods of dissipation followed by short impulses. The period of the oscillations are set by the time it takes for the system to relax from each disturbed state to the threshold that triggers the next disturbance.