Word: reflector
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...make precise measurements of the wobbling of the earth on its axis. This motion, called Chandler's Wobble, should tend to damp out with the passage of time, but is periodically reinforced by unknown forces?possibly earthquakes. More accurate measurements of the wobble with the aid of the laser reflector might someday lead to a technique for earthquake prediction...
...astronauts will also leave behind a laser reflector pointed toward the earth. The reflector actually consists of an array of 100 quartz corner reflectors, so called because they are shaped like the corner of a cube or a room. Each reflector has a valuable characteristic: it will reflect a beam of light directly back to the source. Thus light aimed at the lunar reflector from a laser located in Los Angeles, for instance, will bounce directly back to Los Angeles...
...about the same time, the future astronaut was taking his first close look at the moon through a homemade 8-in. reflector telescope fashioned from a stovepipe and mounted on roller-skate wheels atop a garage. The wondrous device belonged to Jacob Zint, a neighbor of the Armstrongs and a draftsman in the Westinghouse plant. "I can't recall that Neil ever said he wanted to go to the moon," says Zint. But as early as 1946, Armstrong was regularly visiting the makeshift observatory and often, says Zint, "he looked right into the Sea of Tranquillity"?the prime site...
...these amorous doings in a mock dust-jacket blurb that closes Ada by describing only the book's most superficial aspects. Long before he gets around to that, though, a suspicion has set in that the surface love story is as different from the real Ada as a bicycle reflector is from a faceted ruby. More even than Lolita and Pale Fire, Ada is studded with assaults and asides directed at literary forms, figures and fashions. Along with its masquerade...
...measuring the time required for the light to travel to the reflector and back to the geodimeter, he calculated the precise distance between the two points...