Windwise Curriculum and ReCharge Labs Activities are excellent materials for preparing KidWind participants for understanding and exploring the field of wind energy. These resources give KidWind coaches and mentors the tools to prepare middle and high school teams to do well on the knowledge part of the KidWind challenges.
The curriculum is broken into five wind energy areas - Energy, Wind, Turbines, Wildlife & Siting. To obtain lessons, go to https://www.kidwind.org/activities
REcharge Labs has resources for K-12+ learners to creatively explore wind and solar power by blending the art and science activities around renewable energy. There are resources that encourage students to construct houses, cars, fountains that were powered by the wind and sun. All of the REcharge Labs lessons and materials are now housed at KidWind site at https://www.kidwind.org/activities
Objectives:
Students will learn:
Wind speed can vary with elevation over the earth’s
surface.
Wind turbulence and shear are a concern for wind farms
and wind turbine designers.
What causes wind turbulence and shear and how to
avoid putting turbines near these conditions.
Objectives:
Students will be introduced to:
• The Design Process
• Scientific Method
• Science of Blade Design
• How to collect, evaluate and present data
Objectives:
Students will be introduced to:
Important parts of a wind power curve
Analyzing data, tables and graphs
How to compare a variety of wind turbines based on
their power output curves
Important variables in how much power we can extract
from the wind.
This blog post provides ideas for introducing renewable energy lesson plans and resources to for them to learn about different forms of energy. It also contains ideas for hands-on projects related to renewable energy. See https://blog.planbook.com/renewable-energy-lesson-plans/
Want to 3D print or laser cut wind turbine blades? Tinkercad is one way to learn about CAD. Promo Ambitions has a series of videos that will help you get started! Visit https://promoambitions.com/tinkercad/
Team Caleb tested his 3D printed blades using a direct drive. This means that he did not create a gear box for his wind turbine. This movie shows how the turbine performed in the wind tunnel that James Madison University set up at Makersmiths-Purcellville.