In some contexts, such as particle physics, this trade-off can be attributed to the finite speed of light and the fact that it takes a certain period of time for the photons carrying information to reach the observer.
A transducer may be able to record data every millisecond,[2][3][4] but available storage may not allow this, and in the case of 4D PET imaging the resolution may be limited to several minutes.
[5] In some applications, temporal resolution may instead be equated to the sampling period, or its inverse, the refresh rate, or update frequency in Hertz, of a TV, for example.
The temporal uncertainty can be related to the maximum frequency of continuous signal the oscilloscope could respond to, called the bandwidth and given in Hertz.
The shape of the response during the settling time also has as strong effect on the temporal resolution.
If it is much shorter, the oscilloscope may be prone to aliasing from radio frequency interference, but this can be removed by repeatedly sampling a repetitive signal and averaging the results together.