Radar dish? Microwave dish?? WARNING: Season 4 discussion

[on:]

In S4E1 - Roswell that ends well, Leela notices that the army base has a 'microwave dish' which they could steal and use to get back to the 30th century.  Later on the professor says "start the ship, lets just steal the radar dish and get out of here".

Anyone else notice this?

Also after that is the classic "oh, a lesson in not changing history from mister I'm my own grandpa"

[Reply #1 on:]

Welcome to PEEL Synx! (lol, Amy looks stoned)
Well, I think it's just one of the professor's signs that he's senile, so he probably mixed up the words. He gets confused sometimes.

[Reply #2 on:]

Professor isn't confused, he knows what he is talking about.  Microwaves are radio waves, at a different frequency. In the case of microwave ovens, the commonly used radio wave frequency is roughly 2,500 megahertz (2.5 gigahertz).

[Reply #3 on:]

And when focused will pin you to a wall.

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Damn, and to think I took that stuff in physics last year! How my mind forgets...All I know was that radar was a recently new invention in 1947, used first in WWII. McGrady is right. Microwaves and radio waves are right next to each other in the electromagnetic spectrum, it's just that their uses are different.

[Reply #5 on:]

RADAR:

RAdio Detection And Ranging.

The RADAR we see in Roswell (1947 radars) is a simple wave radar, in high frecuecies to detect objects and marc it`s position, but it can`t determinate direction or speed (that ability come later with the Doppler RADAR that can determinate direction,speed and acelerations parameters), is the same type of radiation, waves, but microwaves make vibrate the H2O molecles of the food to heat it (i guess), radar just use the wave ping on certain surfaces (radar waves has a little efect on perfect plane surfaces, see F-117 stealh).

Also, Nuclear explosions products a wide range of waves , from ALPHA, BETA (the dangerous ones), GAMMA, etc...

Please, if i had made a mistake (very possible, because all of this i readed a long time ago) correct me!

[Reply #6 on:]

 

Originally posted by Javier Lopez:
RADAR:

RAdio Detection And Ranging.

The RADAR we see in Roswell (1947 radars) is a simple wave radar, in high frecuecies to detect objects and marc it`s position, but it can`t determinate direction or speed (that ability come later with the Doppler RADAR that can determinate direction,speed and acelerations parameters), is the same type of radiation, waves, but microwaves make vibrate the H2O molecles of the food to heat it (i guess), radar just use the wave ping on certain surfaces (radar waves has a little efect on perfect plane surfaces, see F-117 stealh).

Also, Nuclear explosions products a wide range of waves , from ALPHA, BETA (the dangerous ones), GAMMA, etc...

Please, if i had made a mistake (very possible, because all of this i readed a long time ago) correct me!

Lot's of good info from Javier here - thanks.

Technically, the professor was correct (the best kind of correct) - it was a radar dish in "Roswell that Ends Well" (there was no microwave communication in 1947).  Leela was not far off, however.  In the early days of radar and microwave cooking, the words "Radar" and "Microwave" were used pretty interchangably.  Consider that one of the very first microwave ovens was marketed under the name "Ammana Radar Range" (Range = Oven)