July 25, 2008

Wind Power investigated by Matsumoto fourth graders

By Ann Fleischer
Matsumoto School
Special to the Times

Fourth Graders at Matsu-moto Elementary School finished the year exploring wind energy. Using the National Energy Education Development (NEED) Project’s kit, supplied by PG&E, students worked in six-person teams trying to find out how to make energy from wind power.

Investigators fashioned make-shift wind gauges out of paper cups, straws, and pencils and used the Beaufort Scale to measure wind speed.

Parents cut PVC pipe and bought enough joints so that five “wind mills” could be fashioned by students. They were shown the model, provided by PG&E and assembled by their teacher, and told to build their own. The NEED kit included enough hubs, dowels, small motors with lead attachments, and duct tape for the students to put together their energy producing devices.

The fourth graders had to determine: how many blades to use; what their pitch should be; and what their distribution should be. Half way through the process, light weight wooden blades were introduced which sent each team back to the drawing board to re-evaluated their combination choices.

To establish wind speed consistency a household fan was used to test the windmills. NEED had included voltage meters for each team, which they used to see how much electricity their windmills were producing.

Many new skills were learned as students worked together to try and produce enough electricity to power a flashlight bulb.

In the end it was determined that linking all the windmills together would have easily powered the light, but time and logistics constraints kept them from completing their hypothesis. Students were left to ponder the outcome for the summer and hopefully come up with more creative solution ideas.