Meteorologists also use radar to map and track weather systems around the world. Radar can be used to detect ships, planes and satellites, or closer to home – radar speed guns are used by the police to calculate how fast cars are going, with any that are going too fast in line for a speeding ticket, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. Radio waves are cheap to generate, can pass through snow, mist and fog and are safe, unlike gamma and X rays. Once returned, they provide information such as range and bearing. Some of the reflected radio waves (echoes) are directed back toward the radar where they are received and amplified, with the data being interpreted by skilled operators with the help of computers, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. According to NASA, they are sent out at approximately 300,000,000 metres per second – the speed of light. Although radio waves are invisible to the human eye as well as optical cameras. The process of directing artificial radio waves towards objects is called illumination. Receiver: Required to detect and turn the pulses, which come back into a visual format to be read by an operator.Switch: This tells the antenna when to transmit or receive the pulses.Antenna: Needed to send the pulse out into the ether and receive it when it is reflected back.
Transmitter: The source of the radio pulse.How does radar work?Ī typical system has four main components, these are: Scottish physicist Sir Robert Watson-Watt, known as ‘the father of radar’, took the science that had gone before and created the workable system that formed the basis of modern radar, according to the Royal Society. Not a catchy name, but nevertheless - a type of early radar system had been born.ĭespite that, it was not until the 1930s that there was a need for the technology, mainly due to the invention of long-range military bombers, which prompted countries to invest in a system that could detect their approach and provide early warning, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica.Īll of the major world powers at the time continued research, but it was the USA and UK that were able to refine the technology. In 1904 a patent was issued to a German engineer called Christian Hülsmeyer for what was termed ‘an obstacle detector and ship navigation device’. As the first person to apply the theories of Maxwell, the unit of frequency of an EM wave was named a hertz after him, Live Science previously reported. In an experiment he conducted in 1888, he discovered that they were indeed reflected back. (Image credit: Getty)Ī few years later, German physicist Heinrich Hertz set out to prove it. Human operators in air traffic control have to keep a constant eye on their radar screens.
0 kommentar(er)
