Harvard Professor Creates Paper Accelerometer 87
SuperSlacker64 writes "In an age where just about everything starts going digital, it's refreshing to see someone going back to our roots: paper. Well, sort of. Researchers at Harvard have created a cheap, dime-sized, paper-based accelerometer that they believe could be used in various ways, such as inexpensive medical testing. The device works because a carbon bridge stretches and changes resistivity as the device is accelerated."
When they say "cheap," they mean it; the cost per device is estimated to be about four cents.
My world is topsy-turvy (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought professors were people who couldn't hack it in the real world, but it turns out academia is behind most innovation in one way or another? Color me retarded.
Re:My world is topsy-turvy (Score:2, Insightful)
>Whoever started the "professors are people who can't hack it" thing was not only wrong but being really vicious against some very competent, creative, and inventive people.
Or maybe he was just looking at the dregs who inhabit most college humanities departments.
Re:Accuracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
80 vs. 120 micronewtons isn't too bad. If by 'sensitivity' you mean the expected standard deviation for measurement noise, and assuming such noise is roughly gaussian, then you can almost achieve the precision of a silicon sensor by using two paper sensors and averaging the results (120/sqrt(2) = 84.9).
Throw together 25 of them (for a total cost of $1.00) and you can achieve 24 micronewton 1-sigma precision.
Re:Accuracy? (Score:4, Insightful)
many applications require high-precision measurements, not just good approximations
And your point is...?
For any application that needs high-precision measurements, there are many others where lower precision would do fine, if only it wouldn't cost so much.
undo (Score:3, Insightful)
Commenting to undo unintentional mod.