What Is Radar and Its Application?
What Is Radar and Its Application? The word radar is an acronym for Radio Detection And Ranging created in 1942. This acronym replaced the British initials RDF (Radio Direction Finding). The word is now thought of by many people as a regular word, no longer as an acronym. Common applications include air and marine traffic monitoring, meteorology, geology, astronomy and speed detection of motor vehicles.
Radar was used during the Second World War to detect enemy planes. Now radar has many uses. It can be used by ships and aircraft to ‘see’ around them at night or in a thick fog. At airports, planes landing and taking off are guided by workers, called flight controllers, using radar. Radar can also be used to find how fast objects are moving. It is used to check, for example, the speed of cars.
It is similar to sonar but uses radio waves instead of sound waves. Radio waves are sent out and are reflected back by any solid object they ‘hit’. The farther away the object, the longer will be the time the reflected waves take to return. The shape of the object and its distance away are shown on a screen, similar to the television screen.
The basic parts of a radar are: The transmitter creates the radio waves. The antenna directs the radio waves. The receiver measures the waves which are bounced back by the object. The first practical radar system was produced in 1935 by the British physicist Sir Robert Watson-Watt, and by 1939 England had established a chain of radar stations along its south and east coasts to detect aggressors in the air or on the sea.