Winner of Name that Ware December 2005!

As predicted, this one was a cinch. Roastbeef posted a correct answer within an hour of the contest going up. Congratulations Roastbeef! I got a rise out of your comment about the improperly named reference designator. And in fact, James Walter guessed the exact model of the G-meter, the G-tech Pro (how do you guys do that?). I got this as a novelty item on loan from a friend of mine to test out in my car. It’s probably the most direct application of freshman physics and the integral that I’ve ever seen…the device measures your acceleration, and from there it integrates over time and infers your position and velocity. Given these values, it reports statistics such as your 0-60 mph times, your quarter-mile performance, and the effective horsepower of your car. It’s suprisingly accurate and robust (so long as you have it mounted correctly–it only measures acceleration along a single axis), although I’ll have to say I wasn’t able to pull off the advertised 4.8 second 0-60 time for my car (almost certainly due to operator error, since I was breaking traction on second gear every time I tried). Thanks again to everyone for playing!

2 Responses to “Winner of Name that Ware December 2005!”

  1. Roastbeef says:

    I just got lucky picking the right time to visit the blog. I’ll still accept the win. :-)

    As far as the device measuring 0-60 and quarter-mile stuff… I’d have to calculate it out, but my gut would question it’s accuracy. Between road grade and chassis pitch it would seem that the integration errors over a quarter mile would add up. If they’d done a 2-axis MEMS with a vertical component so that they could detect pitch in addition to forward acceleration I’d feel better about it.

    So when are you coming to Austin, eh? I think I still owe you a couple of beers.

  2. Josh says:

    My guess is that if you have a car that can do 0-60 in 4.8 you aren’t going to be worrying about pitch much. :)