A piezo sensor attached to the body of an instrument is known as a contact microphone. Piezoelectric sensors especially are used with high frequency sound in ultrasonic transducers for medical imaging and also industrial nondestructive testing (NDT).
Piezo as noted in all formal sources (dictionaries, Wiki, etc) is a Greek root meaning pressure or push. It's combined with some other words to make new nouns and adjectives.
The word "piezo" is derived from the Greek word for pressure. In 1880 Jacques and Pierre Curie discovered that pressure generates electrical charges in a number of crystals such as quartz and tourmaline; they called this phenomenon the "piezoelectric effect".
Piezo technology operates on the principle of the piezoelectric effect, which is observed in materials such as quartz and certain ceramics. These materials possess a unique, asymmetric crystalline structure that is key to their functionality.
piezoelectricity, appearance of positive electric charge on one side of certain nonconducting crystals and negative charge on the opposite side when the crystals are subjected to mechanical pressure.
Learn how the piezoelectric effect powers precise motion in piezo actuators. Discover how electricity and mechanical stress create movement in medical, industrial, and scientific applications.
A piezoelectric disk generates a voltage when deformed (change in shape is greatly exaggerated) A piezoelectric sensor is a device that uses the piezoelectric effect to measure changes in pressure, acceleration, temperature, strain, or force by converting them to an electrical charge. The prefix piezo- is Greek for 'press' or 'squeeze'. [1]
Piezoelectricity is a property of certain materials that allows them to generate an electric charge in response to applied mechanical stress. The term originates from the Greek word “piezein,” which means to press or squeeze, aptly describing the process of generating electricity through pressure.
Piezo elements are excellent for dynamic or transient motion and force sensing. They are used as strain gages for easy and rapid determination of dynamic strains in structures due to their extremely high signal/noise ratios (on the order of 50 times that of wire strain gages).