--- title: Airports, the black box, helicopters and drones — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Airports, the black box, helicopters and drones», a lesson of the technology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: An airport is like a huge machine for sorting people, bags and planes. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Technology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/) / Airports, the black box, helicopters a… # Airports, the black box, helicopters and drones Lesson 23 of the technology course of Mova's primary school: 21 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/0/) — An airport is like a huge machine for sorting people, bags and planes. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/1/) — Each part has its own job: scanners check bags, gates check passports, hidden belts carry suitcases, and controllers in a tall tower keep every plane apart. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/2/) — Your suitcase disappears behind a rubber curtain at check-in with a paper tag on it. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/3/) — A barcode on that tag is scanned again and again as the bag rides kilometres of hidden belts to the right plane. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/4/) — Not everything that flies has fixed wings. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/5/) — A helicopter's spinning blades are long thin wings going round in a circle, a drone does the same with four or more small rotors, and a hot-air balloon simply floats because hot air is lighter than cold air. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/6/) — If something ever goes wrong in the air, two tough recorders called the black box help investigators find out why, so that it never happens again. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/8/) — Never joke about bombs or weapons at an airport; staff must treat every such word as real. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/9/) — Liquids are limited because some explosives can be liquid. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/10/) — Air traffic controllers in towers and control centres use radar (radio waves bounced off planes to find where they are) and radio to keep planes apart and tell them when to take off and land; thousands of planes are in the sky at the same time. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/11/) — Bags are tagged with barcodes and sent along kilometres of hidden belts to the right plane; nobody should ever climb on the baggage carousel. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/12/) — The black box is really two tough recorders, one for flight data and one for cockpit sounds, and they are painted bright orange so they can be found. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/13/) — Runways have lights to guide pilots in the dark and fog, and their big painted numbers show the compass direction divided by ten, so runway 27 points roughly west, to 270 degrees; on a compass north is 0 or 360 degrees, east 90, south 180 and west 270. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/14/) — Planes keep most of their fuel inside their wings, filled from underground pipes or tanker lorries. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/15/) — A helicopter's rotor blades are long thin wings that spin; the small tail rotor stops the body spinning the other way. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/16/) — Nobody goes near a helicopter until the crew says so, because its blades spin too fast to see; air ambulances can land in fields and on hospital roofs. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/17/) — A hot-air balloon rises because a burner heats the air inside it and hot air is lighter than the cold air outside; the first people flew in one in Paris in 1783. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/18/) — A balloon pilot cannot steer left or right; they go up or down to find winds blowing in different directions. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/19/) — A drone flies with four or more small rotors spinning at different speeds, and some hold their place in the air using GPS. - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/20/) — Drones must never be flown near airports, crowds or power lines; near an airport it is against the law and can put planes in danger, and in the UK many drones must be registered. - [21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/23-airports-black-box-helicopters-drones/21/) — A passport gate's camera compares your face with the photo stored on a tiny chip in your passport. - ← previous: [Why planes fly](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/22-why-planes-fly/) - next →: [Ships, ports and submarines](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/24-ships-ports-and-submarines/) - ↑ back to [Technology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/)