College project

Im a mechaincal engineer student and Im looking for help from people on my project as the lecturer that deals with electrical engineering has been off sick for the past few weeks and might be for the foreseeable future. So while my college deals with that i need to move with my project on rachet screwdrivers and some improvement i think i could be made to them but Im stuck at this hurdle which is for one of the experiments i need a electrical sensor that can record each linear movement of the screw as it is turn by the screwdriver.

What type of electrical sensor would be best to measure this? I just need to be pointed in the right direction so i can reasearch and build this experiment.

thanks

It would help if you could describe your test setup, or is that undecided at present.
You don't say what sort of accuracy and repeatability you require.
A cheap and simple solution might be a linear potentiometer, the arm of which could be coupled to the screw.
An expensive option is an LVDT, but you need quite a bit of electronics to go along with it.
A mechanical option would be a dial gauge micrometer.

What ever you do, you would need a way to calibrate the system if it uses an electrical method.
The dial gauge could be used in conjunction with an electrical method to solve the calibration conundrum.
Cheers,
Richard