The NASA SCIence Files™
Airport
Purpose: To design and build an airport

Materials

Procedure
  1. Discuss airports and what they include. Be sure to mention runways, taxiways, wind socks, terminal building, hangar (service, maintenance, and storage), beacon tower, control tower, tarmac, fuel center, parking lots, airplanes, cars, trucks, and any others that you would like to include.
  2. Brainstorm for ideas about various layouts for the airport and choose one.
  3. Optional: Using grid paper, determine a scale for each grid and lay out the design you have chosen for your airport.
  4. Use the bulletin board paper to cut out runways, taxiways, and the tarmac. According to your design, place them on the large, flat surface area.
  5. Place airplanes on the runways or taxiways.
  6. Cover the boxes with construction paper and color or cut out windows and other features of the buildings they will represent.
  7. Label each building or write a business name on the building.
  8. Construct and place the hangars that will be used for airplane service, maintenance, and storage. Label each.
  9. Provide a facility at the airport to fuel airplanes.
  10. Provide a place on the airport grounds to park the cars and trucks that bring people to the airport. Place model cars and trucks in the parking lot.
  11. Add any other additional buildings or roadways that you have designed.
  12. Name your airport.
  13. Choose one of the following:
    • Role-play the manager of the new model airport, providing a tour of the facility to a group of citizens. Use correct terminology to describe the airport, its buildings, and their functions.
    • Simulate the first or inaugural takeoff and landing from the new airport by using a model airplane. Describe the event from the pilot's perspective.
Extension
  1. Ask five or more students to take off from the airport with their model airplanes. Have them "fly" to a destination in the classroom and return to the airport for landing. Ask student observers to describe what method the pilots used to avoid hitting each other. Discuss reasons why real airports designate flight patterns for pilots to use. Why is it important that pilots communicate with each other during a flight?
  2. Have a student be an air traffic controller and direct flight operations at the model airport.
  3. Make a wind sock and add it to your airport. Place a small electric fan on the table to test the wind sock. Use the information from the wind sock to decide which runway to use, remembering that airplanes must always try to take off and land into the wind.
  4. Visit a local airport with the students or invite an airport manager to your class.
airport