|
|
Multidisciplinary
Design, Analysis, and
Optimization Branch
|
|
|
| |
EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES: THE NASA AEROQUIZ
|
|
|
| |
|
| |
Previous February, 2001, questions were lost due to a disk crash. Sorry!
Week of 2/19/01:
Q:
Stealthy aircraft are supposed to be difficult to detect. If that's
true, would you be surprised to learn that lights are sometimes attached
to stealth aircraft? And they're turned on when the airplane is
trying to be stealthy! Why would aircraft designers do that?
A:
During the day, we see aircraft overhead because they are darker than the sky.
Brightening them with lights makes them less visible.
Visual stealth dates back to the 1940s and the US Navy's Project Yehudi.
One of the technologies investigated under Yehudi was the fitting of
lights to the undersides of antisubmarine and attack aircraft. This
matched their luminance with overcast skies, making them more difficult
for U-Boat lookouts to see. Modern versions of visual stealth involve
the use of electro-optical photo sensors that dial in the brightness
of high-tech illumination devices automatically.
Project Yehudi was named after violinist Yehudi Menuhin and his appearance
on Bob Hope's old radio show. The show's zany character actor Jerry Collona
didn't know who Yehudi was and was teased to the point where the "search
for Yehudi" became a running gag.
No one got the correct answer!
- The Aeroquiz Editor.
Week of 2/26/01:
This week's question was submitted by Andrew White!
Q:
Harry worked for a truck rental firm in Albuquerque. He had taken
the keys from a corporal from the local air base only five minutes ago,
and now he was sitting in the cab staring at the odometer reading.
The rental slip told him that since being rented that morning in Ohio,
the vehicle had recorded only six miles on the clock in the intervening
eight hours. He guessed that the truck had been flown in, maybe in
one of those C-130 transports which he often saw through the
fence, but he sure as heck couldn't figure why anyone would want to
take a rental truck for a flight across the States.
Can you explain it to him?
No one got the correct answer! The question stands another week!
- The Aeroquiz Editor.
|
|
|
|
