What Is Radar

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radar can help navigate ships, land planes in a fog, and
guide astronauts. Radar can help control street traffic and assist the
police in finding speeding automobiles.

Radar sets come in many sizes. A small set, made for use in a guided
missile, is not much larger than a coffeepot. The larger sets used to study
distant planets may oupy a building many stories high. The size of a radar
set depends on the job it is expected to do. But all radar sets, regardless
of their size, use the principle of the echo.

How Radar Works

Radar sets produce radio signals. They radiate(send out) these
signals into space with a transmitter.

When a radio signal strikes an object such as an airplane, part of the
signal is reflected back to the radar antenna. The signal is picked up
there as a radar echo. A radar set changes the radar echo into an image
that can be seen on a screen. A radar set also gives the direction of the
target and its distance from the set. How Radar Began

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from an object. The echo comes back clearly. But if the
radio signal lasts a long time, the echo comes back while the signal is
still going out. The radar operator cannot detect the echo at all.

By using echoes, you can find out how far away the reflecting wall of
a canyon is. Sound travels through the air at a speed of about 335 meters
(1,100 feet) a second. If the sound takes 1 second to hit the canyon wall
and return, it must have gone 335 meters. But that is the distance of the
round trip the wall and back. The wall must be half that far away, or
167.5 meters(550 feet). To find the distance to an echo)making surface,
count the seconds it takes for the echo to ...

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