Parts and aspects of a plane:
Cockpit: The area of a plane where the pilot sits
and controls his or her aircraft.
Control Stick: A stick in the cockpit used to roll the plane or move the plane up and down.
Fuselage: The long, narrow part of the aircraft going down the center that houses the main systems of the aircraft; the body.
Nose: The front tip of the aircraft.
Jet Engine: An engine that compresses then ignites air creating large amounts of thrust to propel the plane.
Air Intake: The area of the plane that takes in air to power the jets; usually found under or to the sides of planes.
Engine Nozzle: The area of the jet engine that releases the thrust.
Thrust: The force coming out of the engines that propels the plane.
Throttle: An object in the cockpit used to control how much thrust the engines gives off.
Stabilizer: A wing-like object protruding upwards from the back of the rear part of the fuselage to stabilize the plane, they are either horizontal for pitch stability or vertical for lateral stability.
Canard: A horizontal-stabilator type surface ahead of the wings.
Wing: A long area of the plane protruding from the sides of the fuselage used to lift the aircraft.
Aerofoil: The cross-sectional shape of a wing.
Rudder: A part of the back end of the stabilizer that is used to move the plane left and right. It is controlled with foot pedals in the cockpit.
Tail: The back area of the plane with smaller wing-like objects (tailwings) on the side of the fuselage.
Flaps: A part of the wing that is lowered during low speeds to add lift to the aircraft.
Elevators: A part of the tailwings that sets the pitch of the plane.
Aileron: A part of the tailwings, or the whole tailwing on some planes (stabilator), that rolls the plane.
Elevons: Elevators and Ailerons combined.
Stabilator: An all-moving horizontal stabilizer that acts as an elevon.
Pitch: The act of moving a plane up and down; controlled by the control stick and elevators.
Roll: The act of rolling a plane left or right; from the nose the plane would look like its spinning. Controlled by the control stick and ailerons.
Yaw: The act of moving left and right in an aircraft; controlled by the rudder and foot pedals.
Thrust vectoring: When a plane can move its engine nozzle in different directions to propel thrust up, down, left, or right. This results in amazing maneuverability. Only 2 military planes today can do this and they are still being experimented on, the F-22 and the X-31.
Stall: When a very high angle of attack is reached usually at slow speeds, causing the air to stop flowing over the wings properly and dumping lift. The plane drops quickly and dramatically.
Chord: The distance of the wing from the leading to trailing edge.
Camber: The curvature of an aerofoil shape when viewed as a cross-section. Higher camber increaes lift, but also increases drag.
Aspect Ratio: The wingspan divided by wing chord line, giving a measurement of wing size and shape.
Airspeed: The speed of airflow around an aircraft, which is not the groundspeed, or the speed the plane is traveling as if it were on the ground. If the plane's groundspeed is 250 knots and it is traveling into a 20 knot wind, the airspeed is 270 knots. Higher airspeeds allow the wings to produce more lift.
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