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How An Accelerometer Works, One Must First Understand The Concept Of Vibration

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Introduction
To understand how an accelerometer works, one must first understand the concept of vibration. One example of vibration is sound. When an object vibrates and creates a disturbance in a medium, it creates a sound wave. The sound wave travels in sinusoidal form with certain frequencies. This affect was observed in this experiment with a guitar string, a motor, and a cell phone. The vibration of these systems can be measured with an accelerometer. The accelerometer converts mechanical acceleration to an electric signal.
To record the data measured by the accelerometer, the DAQ system LabVIEW was used. LabVIEW collected the time and frequency data from the plucked guitar string. An important aspect of the DAQ system is the sample rate, or the number of measurements it can make in a certain amount of time. It is an important parameter because without a high enough sample rate, highly dynamic behavior may not be recorded. Another problem with using an insufficient sampling rate is aliasing which is the misinterpretation of high frequency signals as lower frequency components. To prevent this, the sample frequency must be twice the highest frequency. Any signal in the system that is above the Nyquist frequency, which is half the sampling frequency, is subject to aliasing, or false frequency measurement. This means that the data is only reliable up to half of the sampling frequency. However, a sample rate that is too high leads to difficult data processing and noise

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