but it is expected that refinements and improvements in manufacturing will enable easier and less costly manufacture of many if not all embodiments that might be useful for example as seen in fig7 and 8 an accelerometer that can measure acceleration in a plane is shown according to an embodiment each hemispherical surface 11 12 has two electrically conductive regions 510 520 530 540 electrically isolated from each other as above the electrical isolation is achieved by simply leaving portions of the surfaces uncoated to form the desired borders between the regions each region effectively forms a respective capacitor with the spaced apart proof mass 20 and opposed pairs 510 540 520 530 of the regions can measure components of acceleration along axes passing through the respective opposed pairs simply by comparing the capacitance of one region of a pair to that or the other region of a pair measurement of acceleration in the x z plane formed by the x and z axes shown in fig3 and 5 9 can be achieved if the accelerometer or at least the hemispherical surfaces are properly oriented thus measurement in the x z plane can be achieved by comparing the total capacitance of the top regions 510 520 to the total capacitance of.