Friday, May 20, 2005

Plane reverse thrusters

I just read about reverse thrusters for jet airplanes. You know when you touch down and then you hear a really loud sound from the engines and the plane slows down quite rapidly?

I always assumed they somehow ran the engine in reverse or something. I knew that didn't make much sense, but I didn't really know how it would work.

Well, it turns out they deploy these big diverters behind the engine that just redirects the jet exhaust!

See this Wikipedia article for more info.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I used to have that misapprehension too. 'Til I wised up. It only makes sense when you start thinking about it.