Category Archives: Transportation

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No… It’s a blimp!

• Blimps are aircraft with no inside framework used for support.
• Blimps lift due to high pressure and helium pumped in the balloon.
• The only solid parts of a blimp are the gondola, where the passengers are, and tail fins used for stability.
• Blimps require propeller motors for steering mobility.
• Some blimps were used for patrolling purposes for the United States Navy in the World War I period.

Blimp
Image courtesy of Tom Grinsted/Flickr

• Blimps are commonly used for advertising purposes, and some blimps have 1000s of LED lights on them to shine messages.
• Blimps are often deflated in transportation processes.
• The term ‘blimp’ only refers to aircraft that free fly in the air.
• The term ‘blimp’ is a mix of the original British word for blimp, limp, and the most common type of blimp class, B, thus creating ‘blimp’.
• In 1925, Goodyear Tire and Rubber created the blimps we now know today.

Bibiliography:
Blimp 28 February 2013 , Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blimp>

Freudenrich, C N.d., Blimp, How Stuff Works, <http://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/blimp.htm>

It’s a bird!  It’s a plane!  No… It’s a helicopter!

• Helicopters are aircraft that can fly horizontally, vertically and can hover.
• Helicopters are a type of rotorcraft, which enables them to land almost anywhere, because the rotor blades allows the copter to fly vertically.
• Helicopters are also known as choppers, whirlybirds and helos.
• Helicopters have their origins in children’s flying toys, made from bamboo as early as 400 BC.
• Many vertical flying ideas have been experimented with over the centuries and the term ‘helicopter’ was coined for a machine, that did not lift off the ground, in 1861.

• The first ‘flight’ of a helicopter occurred in 1907, and the first full scale production helicopter was designed by Igo Sikorsky in 1942.
• Helicopters are used for, but not limited to, transportation, military, health and safety, construction and tourism.
• Helicopters move slower than most aircraft since the rotor blades’ speed depends on the speed of the copter.
• If helicopters are unsafely operated, helicopters could go out of control or crash and end in serious consequences.
• Up until 2012, the deadliest helicopter crash was a shoot down of a Mil Mi 26 over Chechnya, which killed 127 people.

Bibliography:
Helicopter 5 February 2013 , Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter>

A cement mixer… on wheels!

• Cement trucks are also known as concrete trucks.  They have a drum on the top of the truck which holds concrete.
• Cement trucks mix concrete in the drum with sharp blades to prevent the concrete from turning hard.
• Cement trucks typically pour concrete down long chutes to the site where it is needed.
• The drum on cement trucks turn in one direction to mix the concrete, and the opposite direction to pour concrete out of the drum.
• Long pipes and concrete pumps are used if the cement truck’s chute can’t reach the area that needs to be concreted.

• The first patent application for a cement truck was filed by Stephan Stepanian in 1916.
• Cement trucks generally weigh between 9,070 – 13, 600 kg (20,000 – 30,000 pounds).
• Cement trucks carry approximately 18,100 kg (40,200 pounds) of concrete.
• Most of the time, concrete needs to be delivered from a cement truck 90 minutes after been loaded in the truck.
• Cement trucks typically have a steel barrel, but some new trucks use fibreglass.

Bibliography:
Concrete Mixer 4 January 2013, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_mixer>

Graham, 2006, On the Building Site , QED Publishing, United Kingdom