It can fly 64 tonnes of cargo over 4,000 nmi (7,400 km) or 69 tonnes over 3,200 nmi (5,930 km). The aeroplane was designed to use a new loading system that can use two different ways of holding cargo: containers or pallets (either smaller side by side pallets or larger single row pallets).
It has a new front landing gear system. Normally the A330-200 points slightly downwards when it is on the ground. This is good because the pilots can see the ground better but it makes loading the cargo harder. With this new gear, the aircraft sits straight so it is easier to load the cargo. It works by making the point where the plane attaches to the gear lower. This means that the nose has a bubble on the bottom to make sure the gear fits properly.
Airbus has 67 orders for the A330-200F. The customer who ordered the most planes is Intrepid Aviation Group who have ordered 20.
This version is a tanker aircraft, which means that it carries a lot of jet fuel to give to other planes. It also has a few seats so that it can be used to carry passengers. It is used by the military.
The plane has been ordered by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), the UK's Royal Air Force (RAF), the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
The plane was also offered to the U.S. Air Force as a replacement for some of their Boeing KC-135 'Stratotankers'. Eventually in 2002, they chose Boeing's offering: the KC-767. But this order was cancelled after a lot of political controversy. In 2006, the Air Force started again. Boeing again offered the KC-767 and Airbus teamed up with Northrop Grumman to make the KC-30. This time, they chose the KC-30 and renamed it the KC-45A. But Boeing complained that the ruling was not fair and the US Government Accountability Office agreed with Boeing. The bid was cancelled again. Northrop Grumman has decided not to offer the KC-45A again.
The A330-300 started working in 1993.It was the first type of A330. It competes with Boeing's 777-200 and 767-400ER. It was made as a replacement for the Airbus A300. It has a similar body to the A300-600, but it has new wings and systems.
It carries 295 passengers in three classes or 335 in two classes or 440 in one class. It can fly up to 5,650 nmi (10,500 km).
It has either two General Electric CF6-80E engines, two Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engines or two Rolls Royce Trent 700 engines. All the engines are ETOPS rated at ETOPS-180 which means that the A330-300 can fly up to 180 minutes away from an airport that it can land at.
80 airlines or companies currently use the A330. The ones with the most A330s are Cathay Pacific from Hong Kong who have 32, Delta Air Lines from the United States of America who have 32, Emirates Airline from the United Arab Emirates who have 29, Qatar Airways from Qatar who have 29 and Air China and China Eastern Airlines who are both in China and have 20 each.
The A330 has had ten accidents: two hull-loss accidents (crashes where the plane cannot be fixed and cannot be used any more). There has been a total of 235 fatalities in the accidents.
Germination
Germination occurs when a spore or seed starts to grow. It is a term used in botany. When a spore or seed germinates, it produces a shoot or seedling, or (in the case of fungi) a hypha. The biology of spores is different from seeds.
A "spore" germinates if and when conditions are right. It has a very limited lifespan. The method of spore-bearers, which are lower plants such as mosses, ferns and also fungi, is to produce vast numbers of spores, of which only a small percentage germinate.
"Seeds" contain an embryo, a store of food (the endosperm), and a protective coat. Seed plants include Gymnosperms (such as conifers) and Angiosperms (such as flowering plants). Seeds can survive much longer than spores, sometimes for hundreds of years. The strategy of seed-bearing plants is to invest energy and material in the substance of seeds, and they have evolved more sophisticated methods of dispersal than just wind.
Seeds do not germinate until their requirements are met, and these needs differ from species to species.
The requirements for fruits is the same as for seeds. A fruit is just a seed with one or more extra layers derived from parts of the flower.
Fractal
A fractal is any pattern, that when seen as an image, produces a picture, which when zoomed into will still make the same picture. It can be cut into parts which look like a smaller version of the picture that was started with. The word "fractal" was made by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975 from the Latin word "fractus", which means "broken" or "fractured". A simple example is a tree that branches into smaller branches, and those branches into smaller branches and so on. Fractals have many practical applications.
There are many types of fractals, made in a large variety of ways. One example is the Sierpinski triangle, where there are an infinite number of small triangles inside the large one. Another example is the Mandelbrot set, named for Benoît Mandelbrot. The Sierpinksi triangle is constructed using patterns, but the Mandelbrot set is based on an equation.
There are also many natural examples of fractals in nature including trees, snowflakes, some vegetables and coastlines.
The Koch Curve is a simple example of a fractal. First, start with part of a straight line - called a straight line segment. Cut the line into 3 same-sized pieces. Get rid of the middle of those pieces, and put in the top part of a triangle with sides which are the same length as the bit to cut out. We now have 4 line segments which are touching at the ends. We can now do what we just did to the first segment to each of the 4 bits. We can now do the same thing again and again to all the bits we end up with. We now do this forever and look at what we end up with.
The length of the Koch Curve is infinity, and the area of the Koch Curve is zero. This is quite strange. A line segment (with dimension 1) could have a length of 1, but it has an area of 0. A square of length 1 and width 1 (with dimension 2) will have area 1 and length of infinity.
So, the Koch Curve seems to be bigger than something of dimension 1, and smaller than something of dimension 2. The idea of the similarity dimension is to give a dimension which gives a better idea of length or area for fractals. So, for a Koch Curve, we want a dimension between 1 and 2.
The Koch Curve can be cut into four pieces, each of which are formula_1 of the size of the original. We call the number of pieces that a fractal can be cut into formula_2, and we call the size difference formula_3. We put those into the equation:
formula_4
Where formula_5 is the logarithm of a number. This number is the Hausdorff Dimension of the fractal. In the Koch Curve, this is formula_6 as we wanted.
The Koch Curve is one of the simplest fractal shapes, and so its dimension is easy to work out. Its similarity dimension and Hausdorff dimension are both the same. This is not true for more complex fractals.
The Koch snowflake (or Koch star) is the same as the Koch curve, except it starts with an equilateral triangle instead of a line segment.
Fractals have many applications e.g. in biology (lung, kidneys, heart rate variability, etc...), in earthquakes, in finance where it is related to the so called heavy tail distributions and in physics. This indicates that fractals should be studied to understand why fractals are so frequent in nature.
Some fractals exist only for artistic reasons, but others are very useful. Fractals are very efficient shapes for radio antennas and are used in computer chips to efficiently connect all the components. Also, coastlines can be thought of as fractals.
Main line
A main line is a railway line that is a main trunk route and connects large cities.
Newark North Gate railway station