Today, while watching the plane/flare videos in class, I had a surge of inspiration for this blog! My mind flashed back to, yes, history channel shows about weaponry and battles in WWI and WWII, especially the airplanes (the photo on the right is more or less what I pictured in my head). From the first time that I saw it, I had always wondered how the pilots in those airplanes dropped bombs exactly on the target, and now I know!The physics is actually pretty simple. The horizontal and vertical components of projectile motion are completely independent from each other; the horizontal velocity stays constant throughout while the vertical velocity is acted upon by gravity. Then, the only variable that is a part of both is time. This means that a flare (or a nuclear bomb) dropped from a plane will stay at the same horizontal position as that plane at any given time (that is, until the projectile hits the ground). So, a pilot needs to only calculate the correct time of release for his bomb to hit home (assuming he's going in the correct direction, of course).
I thought it would be a lot more difficult than that. But then again, what do I know about flying bombers?
So, after my mind I had ventured off to physics blogs and WWII nukes, I had two thoughts. One: a seriously freaky campaign ad by Lyndon Johnson that I saw in US history last year, and two: one of the best impersonations of a nuclear explosion I have ever seen. (For those of you in Dr.T's last year with me, this is the video we didn't get to watch.)
No comments:
Post a Comment