Quoted from fooflighter:Nope. You don't rotate the plane. You rotate the yoke fore and aft which changes the position of the horizontal tail surfaces which in turn changes the tail down force which inturn rotates the logitudinal nose to tail control through the lateral access which cuts through the CG. That rotation is pitch
Trust me, your flight instructor never told you "rotate to 10 deg nose up" or "rotate to 5 deg nose down" from straight and level, if he/she did - they were using the term incorrectly...you pitch for desired attitude. The only place we use "rotate" is on takeoff, post V1. In this example during takeoff...the "Rotate" callout is the action/command necessary to pitch the aircraft by means of the yoke.
*Sigh* It's called rotate because the plane literally rotates. This is my final post on this topic, and anyone over and done with this argument can skip this. And if anyone wants the elementary version of this, check out the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum webpage on "How things fly" which says:
"Rotation around the front-to-back axis is called roll.
Rotation around the side-to-side axis is called pitch.
Rotation around the vertical axis is called yaw."
Pitch, yaw, and roll are all subcategories of rotation, just like how a cow is a mammal, which is also an animal. Many terms are more general, and others more specific to better communicate what you mean. If you said, "the plane moved," then someone would ask, "how did it move?" You can be more specific and say, "it rotated," but a plane can rotate on a lot of axis, so it's better to specify on which axis you rotated. Did you execute a lateral rotation to the left, or more simply, "yaw left" or "yaw to port"? Did you rotate the plane such that the nose pulls toward your head? Then you changed the "pitch." Did you rotate left or right along an axis that runs down the fuselage? Then you "rolled."
Pitch, yaw, and roll are more succinct and specific terms to describe a rotation. From a marketing standpoint, the unfortunate reality is that "pitch" doesn't work great as a verb or adjective to describe rotation. It'd be awkward to say the mini PF is a "Pitching playfield" or "A playfield that changes pitch" in promo materials, so it becomes a "Rotating playfield."
Done. Let's play pinball