Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Yo, how's
Speaker 1: it going? Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette,
Speaker 1: and I am a very weird editor here at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Sit Here across from me, as usual,
Speaker 1: is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Slow down, you move too fast.
Speaker 1: You got to make the morning last Uh. Are you
Speaker 1: feeling groovy, Chris? I am? You know what else is groovy?
Speaker 1: What's that? Accelerometers? I like how you bridged that there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't that. That was a really good segue. That's
Speaker 1: that's the tom Merritt segue where you get me mad
Speaker 1: by pointing out my segue. Oh nice, Yeah, tom Merritt
Speaker 1: always hated that, which is awesome, which why you always
Speaker 1: do it whenever soon anyway, So tom Merritt decide we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about accelerometers to day. And accelerometers are in
Speaker 1: a lot of different products, um particularly a lot of
Speaker 1: handheld mobile gadgets, as it turns out, because they provide
Speaker 1: a handy guide to things like orientation and also just
Speaker 1: movement in general. So to understand what an accelerometer is,
Speaker 1: I guess we need to talk about what acceleration is. Okay,
Speaker 1: we can do that, Okay, Yeah, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: point out that we were going to make a return
Speaker 1: to our electronics one oh one. Yes, yes, a long
Speaker 1: return to electronics one oh one. This time we're talking
Speaker 1: specifically about accelerometers. And it's funny because, uh, um, on
Speaker 1: our first few podcasts on this in the series, we
Speaker 1: actually sort of went into a lot of different components. Um,
Speaker 1: and we we sort of recently went back into it.
Speaker 1: It's probably electronics to a one with the Arduino board. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this is a component that you could actually
Speaker 1: hook up to them. They're not particularly expensive components, and
Speaker 1: they're found in all kinds of things, as you pointed out,
Speaker 1: including a lot of things you wouldn't necessarily think of, um, laptops, laptops. Yes,
Speaker 1: um yeah. I remember being uh sort of astounded when
Speaker 1: I heard that Apple was going to put a device
Speaker 1: inside their laptops that would detect when it the laptop
Speaker 1: had been dropped, so it could park the hard drive
Speaker 1: to minimize damage. And I thought, wow, that's cool. I
Speaker 1: wonder what that is. Of course, now they're almost in everything,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of hard to avoid accelerometers. But I
Speaker 1: think I think you're right. I think acceleration would be
Speaker 1: a good, um, good place to start. So acceleration is
Speaker 1: the time rate of change in velocity? Yes, it is,
Speaker 1: and uh and you you might say, well, what what
Speaker 1: was that was? Velocity? Velocity is two things. It's a
Speaker 1: thing speed and the direction it's moving in it. And
Speaker 1: it has two vectors, speed and direction. You cannot have
Speaker 1: velocity without both of those. Oh man, I'm suddenly transported
Speaker 1: back to my physics senior physics class in high school. So,
Speaker 1: so acceleration is the time rate of change in that
Speaker 1: she aange and velocity so um, in a way you would,
Speaker 1: And you measure it by saying it's a distance over
Speaker 1: time over time. Yes, so it's it's measured in feet
Speaker 1: per second per second or meters per second per second.
Speaker 1: So for example gravity, gravity's force of acceleration is at
Speaker 1: thirty two ft per second per second or nine point
Speaker 1: eight one per second per second. So yes, are you
Speaker 1: using the just curious are using the same texas instruments?
Speaker 1: Power point presentation that was one of my main sources. UM.
Speaker 1: The only reason I mentioned that is if you really
Speaker 1: want a uh basic introduction to accelerometers and the things
Speaker 1: we're talking about, that's a great place to start. It's
Speaker 1: free and you can find it online. It's really you know,
Speaker 1: and I trust Texas. It's a it's a PDF format
Speaker 1: and it's clearly it was obviously a slide show, yes originally,
Speaker 1: and you can go through and it's quite quite simple
Speaker 1: to follow along. It does get into a little more
Speaker 1: technical detail than what will cover here, mainly because um
Speaker 1: it uses some really handy graph fixed to explain which
Speaker 1: Chris is showing off to me to the benefit of
Speaker 1: no one out there. But it has some really handy
Speaker 1: graphics to explain things like measuring acceleration and observing acceleration,
Speaker 1: which obviously in an audio podcast we cannot take advantage of,
Speaker 1: so we'll be skipping over that stuff. So accelerometers are
Speaker 1: really all about detecting a change in motion, and uh
Speaker 1: there two basic types of accelerometers. There's a kind that
Speaker 1: will just uh detect um a dynamic change in acceleration,
Speaker 1: and then there's the static acceleration. Now static acceleration, you're thinking, well,
Speaker 1: how can you have something that's static and accelerating at
Speaker 1: the same time. Yes, because static basically the definition of
Speaker 1: static is it is not changing. Yeah, an acceleration is
Speaker 1: a change in time, uh, the time rate of change
Speaker 1: in velocity. So how can you have static acceleration? That's
Speaker 1: really talking about measuring um the amount of stack acceleration
Speaker 1: due to gravity. Yes, so gravity is going to have
Speaker 1: this constant poll. Uh. And like we said before, three
Speaker 1: two ft per second per second is the standard um.
Speaker 1: That's the acceleration of gravity. So on Earth anyway, So
Speaker 1: that's that's always going to be there as long as
Speaker 1: whatever the devices is on Earth. I mean, granted, if
Speaker 1: you take that device into outer space that changes or
Speaker 1: you go to a different planet, then that will change
Speaker 1: the They will still be static, it'll just be a
Speaker 1: different force because you know, not all planets have the
Speaker 1: same gravity as Earth. Right, So where did you want
Speaker 1: to go from here? Well, I was gonna talk If
Speaker 1: you're telling you about dynamic acceleration, then what you're measuring
Speaker 1: is how fast or how how much how much change
Speaker 1: is undergoing in the velocity of a particular object over
Speaker 1: uh an amount of time. So um, that would be
Speaker 1: something that would give you readings on uh, how quickly
Speaker 1: something is changing in velocity, uh, for stuff like our
Speaker 1: handheld devices, and that would be a good example that
Speaker 1: might be, um, the the laptops, Like it tells you
Speaker 1: that it's changing very quickly from stationary to moving really
Speaker 1: fast and that needs to shut down the hard drive.
Speaker 1: Although really I would say that the accelerometers that are
Speaker 1: in laptops are probably similar to the ones that are
Speaker 1: on things like, um, the iPad or other tablet devices
Speaker 1: also smartphones, which are the static ones, and that's where
Speaker 1: where it's uh. The reason for the stag accelerometer is
Speaker 1: to kind of measure the difference uh that's going on
Speaker 1: due to gravity, so that you can determine the orientation
Speaker 1: of that particular device. Yeah. Now they do make accelerometers
Speaker 1: will measure things in two axes. Basically you're you know,
Speaker 1: horizontal in your vertical and then just oversimplifying again obviously
Speaker 1: if you tilt it, you're still measuring in two axes.
Speaker 1: But but there are three axes axis accelerometers as well,
Speaker 1: so you can you can measure a lot more effectively
Speaker 1: as you could imagine within a three D space plane. Yeah, So, um,
Speaker 1: it depends on your application. UM, for something like a
Speaker 1: Nintendo WE remote, you're definitely gonna want a three axis accelerometer.
Speaker 1: Same thing with the other various motion controlled game controllers
Speaker 1: that are out there. But it depends. You know, you
Speaker 1: may not necessarily need that if you can, if you're
Speaker 1: measuring acceleration on something that is moving on a flat plane, UM,
Speaker 1: to access would be fine, to access should be fine,
Speaker 1: or you could. I read one guy that suggested that
Speaker 1: if you really needed three D and didn't have a
Speaker 1: three D, you could mount to two D basically one
Speaker 1: and at at a right angle from the other to
Speaker 1: measure the third axis. But that you know, And and
Speaker 1: while there's the static and dynamic accelerometers, there's also the
Speaker 1: there's also another major division, which is analog versus digital.
Speaker 1: So an analog accelerometer is going to have an tinuous
Speaker 1: voltage output that's proportional to its acceleration UH, and then
Speaker 1: digital accelerometers will use UH well, most of them use
Speaker 1: pulse width modulation for the output, which has a square
Speaker 1: wave of a particular frequency, and the amount of time
Speaker 1: the voltage is high will be promoted proportional to the
Speaker 1: amount of acceleration. So you know, again you're talking about
Speaker 1: measuring this and in terms of electricity, in terms of voltage,
Speaker 1: and that's what tells the sensor, Hey, this thing is
Speaker 1: moving in this particular way. It's the change in voltage.
Speaker 1: So you've got you've got the accelerometer and you've got
Speaker 1: a sensor that together are telling the device what this
Speaker 1: information actually means. And uh, then within these these major categorizations,
Speaker 1: we have several different ways of actually registering acceleration. Yes,
Speaker 1: so we can talk about some of those. For example,
Speaker 1: there are capacitive alerometers. Now that's where you're talking about
Speaker 1: change in capacitance across the surface. Now, capacitance is materials
Speaker 1: ability to hold an electromagnetic charge. Well, you know, like capacity. Yes,
Speaker 1: so it's an easy pneumonic device. Yes, and you one
Speaker 1: very common form of capacitance involves having these parallel plates
Speaker 1: that are a certain distance apart, and then if you
Speaker 1: change the distance, that changes that the capacitance of those surfaces. Uh.
Speaker 1: The distance has a a very strong correlation with the
Speaker 1: capacitance of those um plates. So if they move closer together,
Speaker 1: the capacitance is going to change. So if you create
Speaker 1: a an accelerometer that will allow these these parallel plates
Speaker 1: to either move closer together or move further apart than
Speaker 1: The accelerometer can measure that change in capacitance and then
Speaker 1: interpret that through the sensor as a various form of acceleration.
Speaker 1: It may be the tilt of the device, the orientation
Speaker 1: of that device. That's how you would see it. When
Speaker 1: you like turn your smartphone sideways and it automatically changes
Speaker 1: the view. That's how you perceive this. But on the
Speaker 1: back end, it's all being done through this change in voltage.
Speaker 1: That's just one version, though there's also piezo electric accelerometers
Speaker 1: rather which now you may not be familiar with piezo electric,
Speaker 1: uh that that term we're specifically talking about a an
Speaker 1: interesting phenomenon. There's certain there's certain elements, there's certain kinds
Speaker 1: of materials that when they are when their shape is
Speaker 1: changed in a certain way, they will emit um electricity
Speaker 1: or if they are uh subjected to electricity, their shape
Speaker 1: will change yeah um and and basically in some cases,
Speaker 1: like the application of stress will make this make this
Speaker 1: effect happen. Um cistals are often used. Crystals and watches
Speaker 1: are a very common way of of h illustrating this principle.
Speaker 1: That's how they work. They actually do change shape and
Speaker 1: uh when stress is applied, and then they will admit
Speaker 1: electricity or vice versa, which kind of interesting. UM. So
Speaker 1: this would be a piece of electric crystal that would
Speaker 1: be mounted to some sort of mass and there'd be
Speaker 1: a voltage output UM whenever acceleration changed. There's also piezo resistive.
Speaker 1: Those are surfaces that have some sort of electrical resistance
Speaker 1: and that will change relative to whatever acceleration is uh
Speaker 1: is placed upon that object. UM. There's some that involve
Speaker 1: magnetic fields, the magneto magneto resistive resistive accelerometers. Yeah, those
Speaker 1: will change in the presence of any sort of magnetic field.
Speaker 1: There's also the Hall effect accelerometers, which they detect motion
Speaker 1: by sensing changes in magnetic fields, but only in corridors.
Speaker 1: I'm kidding, I walk alone. Uh. Anyway, There's also the
Speaker 1: there's UM some that detect changes in heat, and the
Speaker 1: changes in heat and become interpreted as changes in acceleration.
Speaker 1: And Yeah, there's all these different kinds that are out
Speaker 1: there on the market. So the kind you use is
Speaker 1: really dependent upon what sort of device or um. Uh,
Speaker 1: what's our purpose accelerometer is going to have? UM? So
Speaker 1: it's it's an interesting world. I mean, it's interesting kind
Speaker 1: of um uh component that can be used in lots
Speaker 1: of different applications. Uh, it's I think it's actually pretty
Speaker 1: clever to use it in things like smartphones and tablets
Speaker 1: as a way to help, uh, determine the orientation of
Speaker 1: that device so that it gives you the proper view.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's also used useful in things like let's
Speaker 1: say that you have a device that has UM a
Speaker 1: camera in and you're using it for an augment and
Speaker 1: reality purpose. The accelerometer might help the the your processor
Speaker 1: in your in whatever device you're using. For example, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna use smartphone because I've seen that most frequently
Speaker 1: in smartphones. Let's say you've got a flat map out
Speaker 1: on a table, and you've got your augmented reality application
Speaker 1: running on your smartphone, and it creates this three D
Speaker 1: virtual realm that's that sits on top of that physical
Speaker 1: map that you're looking at through the lens of your
Speaker 1: smartphones camera. The accelerometer might be feeding information to the
Speaker 1: CPU that helps the the smartphone. No how you're holding
Speaker 1: your phone so that it's displaying the three D model properly.
Speaker 1: Because if it doesn't know the right orientation, then you
Speaker 1: might be looking at let's say it's a building. You
Speaker 1: might be looking at a building and it's tilted at
Speaker 1: a really weird angle because it hasn't the phone is
Speaker 1: unable to figure out how it's positioned in relation to
Speaker 1: the map. Now, some of that is done by the
Speaker 1: camera itself. A lot of that actually is done by
Speaker 1: the camera itself, but the accelerometer may also feed additional
Speaker 1: information to the CPU in order to get the most
Speaker 1: accurate results. So that's just one example. I mean there's
Speaker 1: plenty of others. There's things like, uh there, I remember
Speaker 1: there was a um, I think it was an iPhone
Speaker 1: app that came out shortly after the iPhone debut, which was, uh,
Speaker 1: it would measure how long in the air your iPhone
Speaker 1: was when you would toss it up in the air
Speaker 1: and catch it, which to me sounds like a terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible idea. It sounds like a great way to to
Speaker 1: create Apple iPhone turnover, Apple turnover. Uh. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean cars. Cars. Yes, that's a very obvious use, especially
Speaker 1: for things like even even if you're not talking about
Speaker 1: within a car itself, like like for for the end driver.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you want to do things like test
Speaker 1: a car for the stresses that it will undergo when
Speaker 1: it's in a crash situation. You use accelerometers in that
Speaker 1: as well to kind of and accelerames within crash test dummy,
Speaker 1: since you can determine if the forces that a human
Speaker 1: would uh would experience within a test or within a
Speaker 1: crash situation rather if they would be you know, strong
Speaker 1: enough to cause injury or even death. In fact, we
Speaker 1: have how crush test dummies work at House of Works
Speaker 1: dot com that goes into more detail on that. Yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean you can there. They were also talking recently
Speaker 1: again about how UH car manufacturers have been putting boxes
Speaker 1: in cars for years now to gather information, uh, sort
Speaker 1: of like the boxes that you see in airplanes. UM,
Speaker 1: that will tell you more or less, you know, the
Speaker 1: information that it collects all kinds of information, but basically
Speaker 1: the speed at which you were traveling. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it will give you an idea the direction you were
Speaker 1: headed in. So if they need that information for to
Speaker 1: determine what happened in an accident, UH, they could pull
Speaker 1: that from the their uh the box and they can
Speaker 1: you know, they use these these instruments to tell but
Speaker 1: you know, an accelerometer is not necessarily enough depending on
Speaker 1: what you want to do. And that's that's actually interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean they are everywhere now, but you're starting to
Speaker 1: see certain applications for which UM accelerometers are being augmented
Speaker 1: with gyroscopic devices, things like the the WE remote when
Speaker 1: they and introduced the motion plus the six excess controller
Speaker 1: for the PS three. Yeah, yeah, yeah, these are elements
Speaker 1: where the gyroscope also plays a big role in determining
Speaker 1: the orientation and the pitch, the role the yaw, all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff that also gets that also gets
Speaker 1: uh measured by the gyroscopes, which, by the way, we
Speaker 1: have an article how gyroscopes work and how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Yes, and when when we wrote about the
Speaker 1: space industry, which it's come up a couple of times
Speaker 1: about the gyroscopic controls that they used to use back
Speaker 1: when we were trying to reach the moon. Uh not
Speaker 1: us personally, No, we never tried. Well I tried, but
Speaker 1: my cardboard box never actually took flight. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: I mean between the two of them, uh, an accelerator
Speaker 1: axcet acceleramat Earth everything and a gyroscope can be very
Speaker 1: very accurate in terms of what measurement can you know
Speaker 1: the measurements that you can take on on uh, what
Speaker 1: direction and what velocity? Yeah, actually, actually acceleration is going
Speaker 1: on to give you a much more accurate response in
Speaker 1: your electronic gear and some other things that you have
Speaker 1: to consider with an accelerometer. We talked about the number, uh,
Speaker 1: the the access number like how many Yeah, so we
Speaker 1: had that in there, but there's there's more than just that.
Speaker 1: You also have to consider the maximum swing, which is
Speaker 1: that's how much force the accelerometer is is essentially uh
Speaker 1: rated to to measure. Now for something like your smartphone
Speaker 1: or your tablet, it doesn't have to be particularly it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be able to withstand huge amounts of
Speaker 1: of of acceleration. We think of acceleration often in terms
Speaker 1: of the Earth's gravity. So, frank example, if you've ever heard,
Speaker 1: oh man, he was pulling six gs on that turn,
Speaker 1: that's six times the acceleration force of Earth's gravity that
Speaker 1: that person was was experiencing. And um, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're on the Space Shuttle, you might be experiencing ten
Speaker 1: g's which, by the way, uh, if you do that
Speaker 1: for too long. Um, it will kill you because as
Speaker 1: as you experience these these higher g s, you will
Speaker 1: actually have the blood forced from your head and uh
Speaker 1: down your body, and that can actually deprive your brain
Speaker 1: of oxygen. Which is why if you ever watch a
Speaker 1: test pilot or you ever go through test pilot training
Speaker 1: for supersonic flights, they often are told that they have
Speaker 1: to uh, they have to sort of strain so they
Speaker 1: force blood back up to their brain to avoid blacking out.
Speaker 1: So it's it's like where you actually hear I'm going
Speaker 1: where they're they're really trying to force blood back up
Speaker 1: there so that they can withstand these g's that are
Speaker 1: uh they're undergoing for the purposes of a supersonic flight. Um. Actually,
Speaker 1: I saw a great MythBusters where Adam Savage totally blacked
Speaker 1: out because he was doing a supersonic flight and they
Speaker 1: did this really powerful turn and uh and it was
Speaker 1: it was too much for him. And you know, let's
Speaker 1: let's be honest, the dude it was the first time
Speaker 1: going on a on a flight like that. I mean
Speaker 1: I would have happened to me, just probably faster because
Speaker 1: I think Adams in better shape than I am, so um, anyway,
Speaker 1: for your accelerometer, you have to have it. You know,
Speaker 1: you have to figure out how much force it's going
Speaker 1: to be able to to measure. And for something that's
Speaker 1: simple like smartphone or tablets, something that's not going to
Speaker 1: withstand high amounts of acceleration, it might be plus reminds
Speaker 1: one point five g's, so one and a half times
Speaker 1: the the gravitational force of that we feel on Earth.
Speaker 1: But if you wanted something more substantial, um, it might
Speaker 1: be plus or remindus to g's. And it's only when
Speaker 1: you're starting to look at something that it's gonna have
Speaker 1: lots of sun stops and starts that you're looking at
Speaker 1: plus or minus five gs or more. Uh Like just
Speaker 1: something like the space shall clearly you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: have plus or minus ten g's. It's not gonna because
Speaker 1: the forces that that experiences are much greater than anything
Speaker 1: that we're going to have on our phones. For most
Speaker 1: of us. Anyway, maybe if you get really mad and
Speaker 1: you throw it really hard, um, in which case you
Speaker 1: might want to pursue a career in the major leagues.
Speaker 1: Uh So the maximum swing uh is one of the
Speaker 1: other things you have to consider. Also, the sensitivity of
Speaker 1: the accelerometer. UM, not like that, but in general you
Speaker 1: wanted to be really a sensitive device because if it's
Speaker 1: not sensitive, it's not gonna pick up uh a slight
Speaker 1: changes in velocity, it's not really doing you any good. UM.
Speaker 1: And then also the bandwidth of the accelerometer. You have
Speaker 1: to figure out how frequently the accelerometer is checking the
Speaker 1: uh the changes in velocity over time, So for example,
Speaker 1: might be fifty hurts, so fifty times a second the
Speaker 1: accelerometer is checking to see about changes in velocity. UM.
Speaker 1: You know it's uh if you're looking at something that's
Speaker 1: checking the acceleration of some of a device that's vibrating
Speaker 1: at a really high frequency, then obviously you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to have a much higher bandwidth. You're gonna have to
Speaker 1: be checking that those changes much more frequently than fifty hurts.
Speaker 1: So one other UH factor that you might want to consider,
Speaker 1: depending on what you're doing with the the device, UM
Speaker 1: is the impedance or buffering. Basically, UH, that's beyond it's
Speaker 1: really we're getting to the point where we're beyond the
Speaker 1: scope of electronics one and one UM. But depending on
Speaker 1: the type of project you you need you might have
Speaker 1: to consider this because uh, analog and digital accelerometers handle
Speaker 1: impedance differently. So, um, you know, if you're really getting
Speaker 1: into the fine points of an electronics project, UH, take
Speaker 1: a look at this before you run out and buy
Speaker 1: a component to add to your to your project, because
Speaker 1: it may be a factor for you, and it may not.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're doing something uh really simple, then
Speaker 1: it may not necessarily be an issue. I remember, actually
Speaker 1: I think we talked about this a Make project where, um,
Speaker 1: you know, Make magazine from Riley Publishing, they had taken apart.
Speaker 1: They showed a video where they took a part a
Speaker 1: WE remote and basically uh installed it on a in
Speaker 1: a box, um, and put it on a roller coaster
Speaker 1: where they were measuring the acceleration using the basically the
Speaker 1: accelerometer already in the board. UM. So I mean this
Speaker 1: is talking about impedance things that they were already using
Speaker 1: a known device that they just hooked it up to.
Speaker 1: They hacked it apart and uh put it on a
Speaker 1: device where they could measure these things, and it was
Speaker 1: it's kind of cool to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: So I mean, if you're doing something where you're already
Speaker 1: working with like un if you're building it from scratch,
Speaker 1: then this is something you have to look into. Yeah, yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: so so um something to to investigate more thoroughly. Um
Speaker 1: As we said, there are many, uh, pretty good sources
Speaker 1: of information out there. That Texas Instruments document is one,
Speaker 1: and and there are some others out there, so yeah,
Speaker 1: they Uh, I wanted to also mention that, you know,
Speaker 1: we we've talked a little bit about other We've talked
Speaker 1: extensively about other devices that use accelerometers in a way.
Speaker 1: You can even think of a seismometer as having an accelerometer.
Speaker 1: It's got a a mass that's that's that's kept in
Speaker 1: in separation with the rest of the device, and it
Speaker 1: actually measures the the movement and uh like the it's
Speaker 1: not technically the speed, it's the magnitude and the direction
Speaker 1: of the movement. So it's not exactly an accelerometer, but
Speaker 1: it's a similar concept. Yeah, because we're talking about we're
Speaker 1: talking about magnitude as opposed to speed. Those are two
Speaker 1: different things. Now, you might move a great distance, but
Speaker 1: do it slowly, uh, and that you know, but but
Speaker 1: a seismometer would still pick that up. Um as opposed
Speaker 1: to moving a small distance, but moving really really quickly. Again,
Speaker 1: a size mometer will pick that up. But it's it's
Speaker 1: looking at you know, it's looking for the the strength
Speaker 1: or the amount of movement, not the speed of movement necessarily, right, right,
Speaker 1: And and I could see instances where you would want both. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: you know, but for something like you know, the geographical
Speaker 1: surveys and and keeping track of those things. Um, you're right.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Earth is considerably larger than a lot
Speaker 1: of other things for which you would want, uh, seismological
Speaker 1: information and acceleration information, so they're probably a lot less
Speaker 1: concerned with the acceleration, except you know, it would help you.
Speaker 1: It probably would help you determine the speed with which
Speaker 1: like a fault is snapping. Yeah. Well, I mean they
Speaker 1: can measure the difference of time between the two different
Speaker 1: waves that that kind of gives an indication of that.
Speaker 1: But the I was going to say that, Yeah, until
Speaker 1: I build my planet size compute, Yeah, it's not really
Speaker 1: a concern. Maybe I already have, but yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: these these devices being able to measure this information uh
Speaker 1: is very helpful for a number of real world applications,
Speaker 1: and um, without it, we wouldn't have the versatility that
Speaker 1: we do with our objects are devices that we have today? Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: So you know you would have maybe a manual like
Speaker 1: can you imagine being so primitive as to have a
Speaker 1: tablet device where you have to manually change the view
Speaker 1: so that it's portrait to landscape? What is this stone Age? Well,
Speaker 1: you know in the Stone Age, all you had to
Speaker 1: do was turn the tablet. Yeah, and then of course
Speaker 1: it wouldn't change to turn your head, carve a new one,
Speaker 1: U turn sideways. This not little right, and that was
Speaker 1: brought to you by Jonathan Strickland, Capeman extraordinaire. I'd like
Speaker 1: to wrap this discussion now. Yeah, we'll have to come
Speaker 1: up with some other components. Uh, specific components that you
Speaker 1: might find in electronics projects, might not yep, if you do,
Speaker 1: please let us know, sure do something specific. Like if
Speaker 1: you're thinking, guys, I really need you to do a
Speaker 1: full episode on capacitors, let us know. I don't know
Speaker 1: that we could squeeze a full episode of capacitors, but
Speaker 1: maybe we can. Well, we've talked about them a little
Speaker 1: bit in our previous Electronics one on one series, so
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a battery, but it ain't all right,
Speaker 1: So that wraps up our discussion on capacitors, also accelerometers.
Speaker 1: If you guys have any other either components or actual
Speaker 1: electronics you want us to talk about, let us know.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email. That address is text
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff Works dot com, or you can
Speaker 1: contact us on Facebook and Twitter are handled. There is
Speaker 1: tech stuff H s W. Chris and I will talk
Speaker 1: to you again really fast, I mean soon. Be sure
Speaker 1: to check out our new video podcast, Stuff on the Future.
Speaker 1: Join how Staff Work staff as we explore the most
Speaker 1: promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House of Works
Speaker 1: iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought
Speaker 1: to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
Speaker 1: are you