﻿ Pedometers: Health and Disease Prevention - What's a pedometer
used for? - MedicineNet  Pedometers (cont.)   What's a pedometer
used for?  Comment on this  A pedometer is a small, beeper-sized
device you wear on your waist that counts the number of steps
you take.  How do pedometers work?  There are two types of
pedometers, spring-levered and piezoelectric. Spring-levered
pedometers use a spring-suspended horizontal lever arm that
moves up and down in response to the movement (vertical
accelerations) of your hips as you walk or run. The movement
opens and closes an electrical circuit, and as the lever arm
makes contact, a step is registered. Spring-levered pedometers
must be placed in a vertical plane, perpendicular to the ground,
in order for them to work. They don't work if they tip forward
to a horizontal plane.  Piezoelectric is a material that
generates an electric charge when it is mechanically deformed.
Piezoelectric pedometers use a horizontal cantilevered beam with
a weight on the end that compress