Word: metallize
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Like most U.S. warships, the Stark has a last-ditch weapon: the Phalanx, a six-barreled Gatling gun capable of firing 3,000 rounds a minute of uranium, 2 1/2 times as dense as steel, to create a wall of metal in front of the attacking missile. But the Phalanx system has its limitations: it operates only at close range and has difficulty tracking sea-skimming missiles amid the radar "clutter" caused by waves. Even under manual operation, the Stark's Phalanx system should have detected the incoming missiles, but the ship's only warning came just seconds before impact...
...long inner-tube box. A historian would later equate the importance of this incident with Newton's observation of a falling apple. Biographer Howard is more restrained and more engaging when he attributes the insight to a "genius for the tactile" born of long experience handling wood, cloth and metal...
...puny by most measures. Equal to about 40 tons of TNT, a mere .2% as strong as the Hiroshima blast, it would be feeble in a missile warhead. But in space, packed into the closed end of a stubby barrel and tamped down with hundreds of thousands of metal pellets, the low-yield weapon could wreak havoc. Unlike a standard nuclear explosion, which would vaporize the pellets and barrel, this one would spray the pellets through space at speeds up to 100 times that of a high-velocity rifle bullet. These pellets could not only burst the decoy balloons that...
Farley says he spent $70 and most of his sophomore year trying to figure a place to park. In his search for a safe spot, Farley accumulated nine tickets. One day he returned to his car to find that police had attached a metal boot to one of his tires for parking in an unauthorized area. Farley had to pay $50 to have the boot removed. He now has a parking sticker...
...late afternoon, the sun is unbearable, and the odor of the surrounding pig farms has drifted into the center of town. Oblivious to both, the newly returned residents make small talk as they lounge on metal benches in the plaza. In the language of the Tarascan Indians who ruled the area before the Spanish conquest, Huandacareo means "place of speakers." Now, 500 years later, there is little else...