what is a clock oscillator?

Question

what exactly is it will it make the circuit turn off and on or will it be a constant flow (thats what i am afraid of)

Answer 1

A clock oscillator is a simple on-off pulse circuit that is normally created these days with a crystal attached to a dedicated chip or to terminals on a chip that includes the clock circuit. It can be made with a capacitor that charges and a level triggered circuit that drains it (thus oscillating) with some method of cutting off the output completely and turning it on completely, such as a Schottky gate or other level sensor.
A good clock signal has a nice square wave with a 50% duty cycle so both leading and trailing edges are evenly spaced.