PBS’ “History Detectives” are coming to Cal Poly to test the remains of what might be one of the planes Amelia Earhart flew.
The piece will be tested in an engineering lab facility on campus.
Part of the landing gear was found from a plane off the coast of Hawaii, perhaps one of Earhart’s practice flights, materials engineering department chair Kathy Chen said.
“The show will be about if this piece of the plane could really be the same one that Amelia Earhart flew,” she said.
The metal will be tested to see if it is a piece of one of Earhart’s practie planes, Chen said.
“We’re looking for copper, magnesium elements in the aluminum, and we have that capability in one of our labs using a scanning electroscope,” she said.
“We can tell whether this material is what it should be, but if it’s the plane Amelia Earhart flew, they’re going to figure that out on the show.”
Earhart brought her Lockheed Electra 10-E airplane to Cal Poly for repairs in 1936, where students repaired her Boeing 100 aircraft.
“Cal Poly is one of the first colleges at the time to design and build our own aircraft,” library assistant Catherine Trujillo said. “She needed to get some repairs done on her plane, and this was the closest place to come.”
Earhart’s goal was to travel more than 34,000 miles around the world, and in July 1937 she set out for Howland Island for another 7,000 miles. Despite the unresolved radio frequencies and series of storms, she flew to her destination only to disappear, according to the University Archives.
The piece of aircraft being tested at Cal Poly is not from the same plane Earhart disappeared in, but it will reveal what the piece of aircraft is, University Archives Director Ken Kenyon said.
“History Detectives” investigates modern technologies and solves historical mysteries in order to help solve myths existing in today’s history. It airs at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday on PBS.