Good Science on a U-Haul Trailer? Believe It!

U-Haul trailers have been known their quirky graphics on the side for some time. It turns out U-Haul has some scientifically literate people designing these graphics. Exhibit #1, the graphic they are using for Iowa.
There was a large meteor impact near Manson, Iowa about 74 million years ago and left a crater about 24 miles across! But it gets better. There is an equation on graphic which tells you how far ejecta will land from the impact site...and yes, it's a CORRECT equation!

The Maryland graphic, although not as scientifically intensive, pays tribute the Goddard Spaceflight Center and the Hubble Space Telescope.
California gets a nod for the Jet Propulsion Lab and its role in the Mars rovers.
The California image leaves a little to be desired to be honest. Earth would appear as no more than a dot from the surface of Mars. They depict Earth closer to how it might appear from the Moon.

Colorado has a nice image as well paying tribute to the NOAA Space Environment Center in Boulder.

This is pretty good as prominences frequently follow the Sun's magnetic field and make those distinctive loops. You can also see granulation on the Sun's surface and Earth's magnetic field is depicted as being stretched out by the solar wind. Pretty good overall.
And one more for the road, the West Virginia one is particularly close to my heart.


The Green Bank Telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory is the largest full steerable dish in the world with a diameter of 100 meters. You will notice there is an equation on this graphic as well. It is the famous Drake equation that, if you knew all the quantities, would tell you how many intelligent civilizations there are in the universe. I spent some time at NRAO and worked on measuring radio frequency interference being detected by the Green Bank Telescope.

The space science ones tend to catch my attention, but there are some nice life science ones as well. You can find a complete list on U-Haul's web site. Wisconsin is not currently listed as having a graphic.

Although I enjoyed these graphics, I am not quite as enthralled with the ones for New Mexico and Nevada!