sonar

«sonar» in Mova's school dictionary: a way of finding things under water by sending out sound… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 3 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (sonar; uncountable)

meaning for a pupil

1) Sonar is a way of finding things under water by sending out sound waves and listening for their echoes. tree →

2) Sonar is also the machine that does this, used by ships and submarines. tree →

3) Animals such as bats and dolphins use a natural kind of sonar called echolocation. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science lessons about sound, sonar shows that sound travels through water and bounces back as an echo; the time the echo takes tells the distance. Ships use sonar to measure the depth of the sea, find fish or find wrecks. Phrases: «sonar system», «on sonar», «use sonar».

examples

• The submarine used sonar to find the shipwreck. tree →
• Fishing boats use sonar to find shoals of fish. tree →
• Bats use a kind of natural sonar to catch moths. tree →
• The sonar screen showed a large shape below the ship. tree →
• Sonar works by sending out sound and listening for the echo. tree →
• Dolphins find food with echolocation, which is like sonar. tree →

note

Uncountable. It is short for «sound navigation and ranging». In maths problems: the echo goes there and back, so to find the distance, halve the total distance the sound travels (distance = speed × time ÷ 2).

In the corpora

• Sonar sends a ping and times the echo; sound travels about four times faster in water than in air.
• Ships use echoes under water, called sonar, and doctors use very high sounds, called ultrasound, to see inside the body.
• Sonar sends sound pulses down and listens for echoes from the seabed or fish; dolphins and bats use echoes in a similar way.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «sonar» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.