How do electronic sensors actually “sense” things
In: Technology
There are a million sensors that work on different principles but essentially it works like this:
An analog condition (such as temperature, the closeness of a wall, the color of an object, etc.) will be measured by the sensor in one of many ways. Lets use an electric meat thermometer as an example. When two conductive metals are of different temperatures, they produce an electric current when they’re allowed to conduct heat from one to the other (this is due to some more complicated material properties outside the scope of the question). The level of current the metals produce is proportional to the temperature difference between the thing measured and the thermometer, and so the microchip in the thermometer is programmed to show a certain temperature based on the current produced by the measured substance’s heat.
This is how all electric sensors work: some mechanical force creates an electric current which the device can measure, and it displays info based on how the circuitry is programmed to read the electric current.
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