Could someone walk me through how a colpitts oscillator works. By this I mean, a step by step explanation of current flow and what happens to the current, voltage, etc...I need to understand what's going on when I look at a circuit.
I know the tank circuit oscillates, but I need a little more detail from input to output.
Most of the sinusoidal oscillators are very hard to understand from just a component level of increasing or decreasing currents or voltages. 30 years ago, I spent weeks trying to do just that and drove several professors to drink. The short answer, is I do not think it is possible. The key is that these are very non-linear circuits. The basic thought models of the circuit components are linear and therefore always fail.
The square wave multivibrators can be handled by the basic models, but the sinusoidal cannot. Years later when I got a hold of a Spice simulator, I tried to use that to analyze these circuits. The simulation ran for days to get even a few cycles and they did not give me any more of a clear picture.