How does a lighthouse helps ships navigating?
In: Engineering
At night the sea is black, and so is most of the land. The only thing that ships will see during the night is lights from houses, towns, other ships and lighthouses. So if someone is heading right towards a light then they must have done some wrong navigation and needs to slow down to avoid crashing into it. Lighthouses will focus their lights in a single direction to make them stronger. This was more important when the light were candle or gas lights but is still a feature on most lighthouses. The focusing lens will rotate so from a ship it looks like it is flashing. All lighthouses have different lenses and rotates at different rates so it is possible to identify which lighthouse you are seeing if you know the pattern. This makes it much easier to navigate along the coast as you can use the lighthouses as reference markers for when you should turn. Nowadays with modern GPS and radar the lighthouses does not serve as much purpose any more. However it is still saving lives as people may not always pay attention to the screens but are more likely to pay attention to a light. In addition both GPS and radar can and have been jammed either accidentally or on purpose.
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