February 11, 2018

Alternative Energy

Starting in January of 2018 STEAM club began working on a unit on Alternative Energy.  Each Student is designing a windmill to power a turbine. We have small turbines that power an LED light.  We will compare student windmills and find out which student best powers their turbine.  Upon completion we have a 400 Watt windmill turbine. STEAM club students will design different LED sculptures to be powered by the 400 Watt windmill turbine.  STEAM club will work with D200 to see if it is possible to mount the 400 Watt turbine and sculpture at Emerson.

Here is a video of an example turbine instructors prepared to show students this project is possible. ( Note instructors built 3 different windmill designs, and this is the only one that powered the turbine enough to light the LED light.)

Here is a video of students testing 3.9.  Students learned a lot about what works, and what doesn’t work. Perhaps in our next session students will start to light the led!

Apply scientific ideas to design, test, and refine a device that converts energy from one form to another.*

Use evidence to construct an explanation relating the speed of an object to the energy of that object.
Make observations to provide evidence that energy can be transferred from place to place by sound, light, heat, and electric currents.