Click Science and Discovery Magazine for Preschoolers and Young Children November/December 2016

Airplanes fly to and from airports all over the world. These airports are very busy places. There are ticket agents checking tickets. There are air traffic controllers up in the control tower telling pilots when to take off and land. There are baggage handlers putting luggage on planes. There are restaurants to eat at and places to sit and watch the planes take off. What else is happening at the airport? An airplane has many parts. It has very large wings, and engines powerful enough to lift its weight off the ground. Inside there are rows of seats for passengers and a seat up front for the pilot. On the ground, many people help to get the plane ready for takeoff. Inside the cockpit are many instruments the pilots use…

A Alpha B Bravo C Charlie D Delta E Echo F Foxtrot G Golf H Hotel I India J Juliet K Kilo L Lima M Mike N November O Oscar P Papa Q Quebec R Romeo S Sierra T Tango U Uniform V Victor W Whiskey X X-ray Y Yankee Z Zulu Every plane has a call sign. It’s like a name, and no two are exactly the same. Most call signs include the name of an airline or kind of airplane plus numbers or letters. The letters look like the ones you know. But pilots don’t say A, B, C; they say Alpha, Bravo, Charlie. Letters are easy to hear wrong. Words are clearer, so pilots have a word for every letter. Pilots say numbers the way you do,…

Can you roll like a log or somersault on the ground? Some planes can do those tricks—and more—in the air. The pilot even flies upside down sometimes. What does that feel like? Well, with your seat belt on TIGHT, it’s like hanging from your lap. Your cheeks push on your eyes. Your sunglasses lean on your eyebrows instead of your nose, and your lungs feel a little crowded. Now that you know what to expect, let’s try a flying move called an Immelmann. It starts with the plane looping up, then rolling so it ends right side up and facing the opposite direction. 1 Sit on the floor in an imaginary airplane. Make sure there’s room all around you, especially behind you and to the right. Look over your left…

When you toss a ball into the air, an invisible force called gravity pulls it down. Gravity pulls everything on Earth down toward the ground. But what about things that fly? Why doesn’t gravity pull them down? Where does lift come from? Wings. Gravity does pull on them! But forces work in pairs. A force called lift works opposite of gravity. It pushes or pulls things up. The wings on a bird or plane create lift when they move through the air. The amount of lift a wing makes depends on its size and shape, how much it tilts up into the air, and how fast it moves. Most airplane wings are curved on top and at the front edge. This special shape is called an airfoil. An airfoil splits…

Hold one short edge of a strip of paper in front of your mouth, and let the other end hang down. Blow across the curved top. The paper lifts up, just like a wing! Hold the paper to one side of your mouth so it sticks out straight ahead. Blow, and nothing happens. There’s no curve. Now curl one end of the paper by pulling it across the edge of a table. Hold the curved end to one side of your mouth, and blow. Now the air curves. The paper moves toward it and straightens out.…

My name is Jacko, and this is the story of my most special day ever. I woke up too early that day. It was dark, and I heard snores coming from Grandma’s bedroom. I didn’t want to wake her, so I closed my eyes and thought about the otter video we’d seen at school. It showed otters sliding down a riverbank and splashing in the water. Otters are excellent at swimming and fishing, but I know one thing for sure: otters are animals that CANNOT FLY! So here’s the weird thing—almost all the planes that fly into Nain, the town in Canada where I live, are called Twin Otters. I get the twin part because the planes have two engines, but wouldn’t a bird name, like gull or goose, be…