Bender elements are made from piezoelectric ceramic bimorphs, and are used in pairs to measure the shear wave velocity in a soil specimen. This involves inserting each element a small distance into the top and base of a specimen, then applying an excitation voltage to one element to generate a shear wave in the soil. The other element is used to pick up the shear wave that has propagated through the specimen, with its displacement due to the wave inducing a voltage, which is then read by a data acquisition unit. Through knowing the distance between the two elements, and observing the time required for the shear wave to propagate, a value of the shear wave velocity can be obtained. From this point only the specimen dimensions and soil bulk density are required to produce a shear stiffness estimate.