Aeronautical Engineering 2006 September 7 15:01
Posted by diamond in : Work , 4 commentsYesterday i went to have a chat to the head of the mechanical and aeronautical engineering department here in UL. I had a problem i was trying to solve which involved tracking an object in 3d-space given it’s acceleration and rotation on 3 axes. He turned out to be amazingly helpful and approachable, and spent over an hour leading me through solving the problem. This bit amused me though:
Him: So, we define the x axis as being in the direction the aircraft is travelling, the z axis is pointing straight down (it’s a convention in aeronautics), and the y axis is perpendicular to the first two
Me: Choosing the z axis as pointing straight down, isn’t that rather pessimistic?
Him: Oh. I guess it is, i’ve never really thought about it like that before
