Paper Accelerometers

All this talk of MEMS¹ and piezoresistance (so industry-specific a term that even the IEEE guys had to put it in italics!) really serves to undermine for us non-engineering types the significance of what is being talked about in the article because our eyes glaze over like one of those crazy fad donut wedding cakes from some years back. Bottom line: it’s an accelerometer. Like the one in your phone. Or the airbag system in your car. These kind of things are normally made of silicon but this is made of paper and silver ink! It costs 4¢! 4 cents people!

It’s cheap. It’s disposable. Its applications will start multiplying. Expect to see accelerometer technology popping up in a lot more places. You could even give them out as wedding favors with your donut cake.

1) MEMS is the acronym for microelectromechanical systems, FTI. Glad these guys put it in their article, because there are those of us out here who have no idea what they are talking about and are too lazy to open another tab to search for the Wikipedia entry.