My current project is pretty cool, but my vote goes to the system I helped design to process sonar (underwater sound). The ship has a big dome under the water that makes a loud “ping” sound and it contains lots of microphones that listen for echoes. Fish, a ship’s wake, or even changes in the water will echo it back but submarines are what we wanted to find. Because there are many microphones, you can tell the direction, and how long between ping and echo tells you how far.
The really cool thing was I got to go to sea on a destroyer and (at 2am in the morning) I could tell the captain I had found the submarine – it was of course a friendly one.
My current project is pretty cool, but my vote goes to the system I helped design to process sonar (underwater sound). The ship has a big dome under the water that makes a loud “ping” sound and it contains lots of microphones that listen for echoes. Fish, a ship’s wake, or even changes in the water will echo it back but submarines are what we wanted to find. Because there are many microphones, you can tell the direction, and how long between ping and echo tells you how far.
The really cool thing was I got to go to sea on a destroyer and (at 2am in the morning) I could tell the captain I had found the submarine – it was of course a friendly one.
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