Capacitors typically consist of two parallel plates with a material in between them (called the dielectric material). By altering the size of the plates, the distance between them, or the dielectric material, you can create a sensor to detect things in the real world.
Capacitors are used as sensors for many applications and this project gave students in first year Electrical and Computer Engineering the opportunity to design sensor systems, integrate them with electrical circuits to measure something in the real world, and finally evaluate the performance of their sensor, comparing the results to their theoretical predictions.
The top projects from the spring 2020 offering of this project in ECE 106 can all be seen below.