Height-velocity diagram

A height-velocity diagram is like a really special chart that helps someone understand how quickly a plane can climb and how high it can go.

Imagine you are at the playground and you want to climb the tallest slide. When you start climbing, it's pretty easy and you go up the ladder quickly. But as you get higher and higher, it starts to get a lot harder to keep going up. You might start to slow down and get tired.

It's the same with a plane. When it takes off, it can climb pretty fast, but as it gets higher and higher, it gets harder and harder to keep going up at the same speed.

On the height-velocity diagram, the height is marked on the side and the speed of the plane is marked on the bottom.

If you draw a line on the chart that connects the height and speed a plane can reach, you get a curve that starts out pretty steep and then flattens out as it gets higher. This curve is called a "flight envelope."

The flight envelope is really important because it helps pilots know how high they can go and how fast they can fly at different altitudes. If they go too high or too fast, the plane could have problems or even crash.

So the height-velocity diagram is like a special tool that helps pilots understand how to fly their planes safely.