Ferdinand Porsche was an Austrian-German automotive engineer and founder of the Porsche car company. He is best known for creating the first gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle, the Volkswagen Beetle, the Mercedes-Benz SS/SSK, several other important developments and Porsche automobiles. An important contributor to the German war effort during World War II, Porsche was involved in the production of advanced tanks such as the VK 4501, Tiger I, Tiger II, Panzer VIII Maus, as well as other weapon systems, including the V-1 flying bomb. Porsche was a member of the Nazi Party, was called the "Great German Engineer" by Nazi officials, he was a recipient of the German National Prize for Art and Science, the SS-Ehrenring and the War Merit Cross. Porsche was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1996 and won the Car Engineer of the Century award in 1999. Ferdinand Porsche was born to Anna and Anton Porsche, in Maffersdorf in northern Bohemia, part of Austria-Hungary at that time, today part of the Czech Republic.

Ferdinand was his parents' third child. His father was a master panel-beater, he showed a strong aptitude for mechanical work at a early age. He attended classes at the Imperial Technical School in Reichenberg at night while helping his father in his mechanical shop by day. Thanks to a referral, Porsche landed a job with the Béla Egger Electrical company in Vienna when he turned 18. In Vienna, he would sneak into the local university. Other than attending classes there, Porsche never received any higher engineering education. During his five years with Béla Egger, Porsche first developed the electric hub motor. After the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I, he chose Czechoslovak citizenship. In 1934, either Adolf Hitler or Joseph Goebbels made Porsche a naturalized German citizen. In 1898, Porsche joined the Vienna-based factory Jakob Lohner & Company, which produced coaches for Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria as well as for the monarchs of the UK, Romania. Jakob Lohner had begun construction of automobiles in 1896 under Ludwig Lohner in the trans-Danubian suburb of Floridsdorf.

Their first design was the Egger-Lohner vehicle. First unveiled in Vienna, Austria, on 26 June 1898, Porsche had engraved the code "P1" onto all the key components; the Egger-Lohner was a carriage-like car driven by two electric motors within the front wheel hubs, powered by batteries. This drive train construction was expanded to four-wheel drive, by mounting two more electric motors to the rear wheels, a four-motor example was ordered by Englishman E. W. Hart in 1900. In December that year, the car was displayed at the Paris World Exhibition under the name Toujours-Contente. Though this one-off vehicle had been commissioned for the purposes of racing and record-breaking, its 1,800 kg of lead–acid batteries was a severe shortcoming. Though it "showed wonderful speed when it was allowed to sprint", the weight of the batteries rendered it slow to climb hills, it suffered from limited range due to limited battery life. Still employed by Lohner, Porsche introduced the "Lohner-Porsche Mixte Hybrid" in 1901: instead of a massive battery-pack, an internal combustion engine built by the German firm Daimler drove a generator which in turn drove the electric wheel hub motors.

As a backup a small battery pack was fitted. This is the first petroleum-electric hybrid vehicle on record. Since sufficiently reliable gears and couplings were not available at the time, he chose to make it a series-hybrid, an arrangement now more common in diesel-electric or turbo-electric railway locomotives than in automobiles. Though over 300 Lohner-Porsche chassis were sold up to 1906, most of them were two-wheel drive; some four wheel drive buses were produced. The vehicles achieved speeds of up to 56 kilometres per hour, broke several Austrian speed records, won the Exelberg Rally in 1901, with Porsche himself driving a front-wheel drive hybrid, it was upgraded with more powerful engines from Daimler and Panhard, which proved to be enough to gain more speed records. In 1905 Porsche was awarded the Pötting prize as Austria's most outstanding automotive engineer. In 1902 he was drafted into military service, he served as a chauffeur to Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the crown prince of Austria whose assassination sparked World War I a decade later.

In 1906, Austro-Daimler recruited Porsche as their chief designer. Porsche's best known Austro-Daimler car was designed for the Prince Henry Trial in 1910, named after Wilhelm II's younger brother Prince Heinrich of Prussia. Examples of this streamlined, 85 horsepower car won the first three places, the car is still better known by the nickname "Prince Henry" than by its model name "Modell 27/80", he created a 30 horsepower model called the Maja, named after Mercedes Jellinek's younger sister, Andrée Maja Jellinek. Porsche had advanced to Managing Director by 1916 and received an honorary doctorate from the Vienna University of Technology in 1916: the title "Dr. Ing. h.c." is an abbreviation of "Doktor Ingenieur Honoris Causa". Porsche continued to construct racing cars, winning 43 out of 53 races with his 1922 design. In 1923, Porsche left Austro-Daimler after differences ensued about the future direction of car development. A few months Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft hired Porsche to serve as Technical Director in Stuttgart, a

Ciaran Fitzgerald is an Irish former rugby union player. He captained Ireland to the Triple Crown in 1982 and 1985, the Five Nations Championship in 1983. Fitzgerald captained the Lions on their 1983 tour. After the conclusion of his playing career, Fitzgerald was coach of the national team. Fitzgerald was born in County Galway. Fitzgerald first played rugby while at Garbally College, was chosen to play hooker by teacher and priest John Kirby. Fitzgerald played for University College Galway, went on to play senior rugby for St. Mary's College in Dublin. Fitzgerald rose to prominence in the game, made his test debut for Ireland against Australia on 3 June 1979, during an Irish tour of Australia, he captained Ireland to the Triple Crown in 1982 and 1985, the Five Nations Championship in 1983. Fitzgerald's last test came against Scotland on 15 March 1986 in that year's Five Nations Championship. In total, Fitzgerald received 22 competitive and three friendly caps for Ireland, he scored a try against Wales, in the 1980 Five Nations.

Fitzgerald captained the British and Irish Lions team on their 1983 tour, when the team travelled to New Zealand and were beaten in each test against the All Blacks. Though most remembered for playing rugby union, Fitzgerald was an accomplished sportsman, winning two All-Ireland boxing championships, he played minor hurling for Galway the team he played with reached the minor final against Cork in 1970. Fitzgerald studied at University College Galway, gaining a Bachelor's degree in 1973. Playing in the amateur era, Fitzgerald maintained a career in the Irish Army. Fitzgerald served as aide-de-camp to the President, Dr Patrick Hillery. Following his retirement from playing, Fitzgerald has continued to be involved in the game, served as head coach of Ireland from 1990 to 1992, leading the side to the 1991 Rugby World Cup, where they reached the quarter-finals, he has had a career in media, appearing on Setanta Sports and RTÉ, the Irish national TV and radio service, as a rugby pundit. Sporting heroes 1983 New Zealand British & Irish Lions Tour Irish Rugby Web Site Irish Rugby Web Site

A visual binary is a gravitationally bound system that can be resolved into two stars. These stars are estimated, via Kepler's 3rd law, to have periods ranging from a few years to thousands of years. A visual binary consists of two stars of a different brightness; because of this, the brighter star is called the primary and the fainter one is called the companion. If the primary is too bright, relative to the companion, this can cause a glare making it difficult to resolve the two components. However, it is possible to resolve the system if observations of the brighter star show it to wobble about a centre of mass. In general, a visual binary can be resolved into two stars with a telescope if their centres are separated by a value greater than or equal to one arcsecond, but with modern professional telescopes, interferometry, or space-based equipment, stars can be resolved at closer distances. For a visual binary system, measurements taken need to specify, in arc-seconds, the apparent angular separation on the sky and the position angle –, the angle measured eastward from North in degrees – of the companion star relative to the primary star.

Taken over a period of time, the apparent relative orbit of the visual binary system will appear on the celestial sphere. The study of visual binaries reveal useful stellar characteristics: Masses, surface temperatures and rotation rates. In order to work out the masses of the components of a visual binary system, the distance to the system must first be determined, since from this astronomers can estimate the period of revolution and the separation between the two stars; the trigonometric parallax provides a direct method of calculating a star's mass. This will not apply to the visual binary systems, but it does form the basis of an indirect method called the dynamical parallax. In order to use this method of calculating distance, two measurements are made of a star, one each at opposite sides of the Earth's orbit about the Sun; the star's position relative to the more distant background stars will appear displaced. The distance, d is found from the following equation, d = 1 A U tan ⁡ Where p is the parallax, measured in units of arc-seconds.

This method is used for binary systems. The mass of the binary system is assumed to be twice that of the Sun. Kepler's Laws are applied and the separation between the stars is determined. Once this distance is found, the distance away can be found via the arc subtended in the sky, providing a temporary distance measurement. From this measurement and the apparent magnitudes of both stars, the luminosities can be found, by using the mass–luminosity relationship, the masses of each star; these masses are used to re-calculate the separation distance, the process is repeated a number of times, with accuracies as high as 5% being achieved. A more sophisticated calculation factors in a star's loss of mass over time. Spectroscopic parallax is another used method for determining the distance to a binary system. No parallax is measured, the word is used to place emphasis on the fact that the distance is being estimated. In this method, the luminosity of a star is estimated from its spectrum, it is important to note that the spectra from distant stars of a given type are assumed to be the same as the spectra of nearby stars of the same type.

The star is assigned a position on the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram based on where it is in its life-cycle. The star's luminosity can be estimated by comparison of the spectrum of a nearby star; the distance is determined via the following inverse square law: b = L 4 π d 2 where b is the apparent brightness and L is the luminosity. Using the Sun as a reference we can write L L ⊙ = where the subscript ⊙ represents a parameter associated with the Sun. Rearranging for d 2 gives an estimate for the distance. D 2 = The two stars orbiting each other, as well as their centre of mass, must obey Kepler's laws; this means that the orbit is an ellipse with the centre of mass at one of the two foci and the orbital motion satisfies the fact that a line joining the star to the centre of mass sweeps out equal areas over equal time intervals. The orbital motion must satisfy Kepler's 3rd law. Kepler's 3rd Law can be stated as follows: "The square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of its semi-major axis."

Mathematically, this translates as T 2 ∝ a 3 where T is the orbital period of the planet and a is the semi-major axis of the orbit. Consider a binary star system; this consists of t