Want To Located The Accelerometer In Your Smartphone?

Rhett Allain has a simple, fun rotational physics experiment that you can perform on your smartphone to locate the position of the accelerometer in that device, all without opening it.

Your smart phone has a bunch of sensors in it. One of the most common is the accelerometer. It's basically a super tiny mass connected with springs (not actual springs). When the phone accelerates in a particular direction, some of these springs will get compressed in order to make the tiny test mass also accelerate. The accelerometer measures this spring compression and uses that to determine the acceleration of the phone. With that, it will know if it is facing up or down. It also can estimate how far you move and use this along with the camera to find out where real world objects are, using ARKit.

So, we know there is a sensor in the phone—but where is it located? I'm not going to take apart my phone; everyone knows I'll never get it back together after that. Instead, I will find out the location by moving the phone in a circular path. Yes, moving in a circle is a type of acceleration.

I'll let you read the article to know what he did, and what you can do yourself. 

Now, the only thing left is to verify the result. Someone needs to open an iPhone 7 and confirm the location of the accelerometer (do we even know what it looks like in such a device?). Any volunteers? :)

Zz.