Which accelerometer for earthquake tower

[localrob]

I'm having students build earthquake towers out of balsa wood and they will be shaking the buildings on a shaker table. I want them to measure the acceleration felt at the top of the building. The buildings will have an shaking frequency from 0-2.5 Hz and the accelerations probably won't go above 1 or 2 g's.

There are so many accelerometers to choose from and I'm not sure which would be best. Does anyone have any suggestions?

[sj_remington]

The market is competitive, so recently manufactured consumer grade accelerometers have quite similar characteristics. For an experiment like this it probably does not matter which you choose.

The acceleration can be estimated quite accurately. Assuming that the shaker table executes a motion described by x(t) = A sin(2 PI f t), then the peak acceleration of a point on the table is A (2 PI f)^2.

For A = 1 cm and f = 2.5 Hz, acceleration (peak) = 2.5 m/s^2, or about g/4.

[adafruit_support_bill]

Sounds like you will probably want one that supports a +/- 2G measurement range. We have a number that fit that description. If you need a lot of them, the LIS3DH is a popular low-cost option.

https://www.adafruit.com/?q=acceleromet ... =BestMatch