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turbine using leftover tractor parts, scrap metal, and a topic about energy.
Students will follow William's story and design, test, and 3D print their own
plastic wind turbine that when placed in front of a classroom fan, lights up
an electronic circuit.
In 20 or so brightly colored pages featuring pictures and clear instructional
diagrams, students work through a series of hands-on experiments that intro-
duce them to abstract concepts such as kinetic energy, electrical currents, and
gear ratios. In the Make to Learn lesson plan students make the windmill
blades on a computer-guided paper cutter. They will fabricate the wind tur-
bine's plastic gears and base on a Fab@home printer.
Students work in pairs. The lesson begins:
You have a lot of things plugged in at your house—a refrigerator,
a TV, lamps, and maybe even something cool like a computer or
an iPod. The electricity to power those devices comes from power
plants, which can be powered by wind, water, burning coal, and even
nuclear fission.
The story continues:
But, did you know that out of the 7 billion people in the world,
almost one quarter of them don't have electricity? That's about 1.5
billion people! If any of these people want light at nighttime, for
example, there's not much they can do about it. Unless, like a boy
named William, they try to make their own electricity.
Like any inventor would tell you, in the story, William tries, fails, and tries
again. Finally, William inds the optimal design and in the end of the story,
his “turbine started to spin—irst slowly, then faster, and faster—electricity
began to low. Soon neighbors could see William's house, lit by four electric
lights, even in the darkest night.”
In the classroom I visited, I watched two girls test their 3D printed wind
turbine in front of the fan. The girls informed their teacher that their wind
turbine wasn't working; they discovered a problem with their circuit board.
The girls explained that they took their windmill apart and igured out a wire
was connected to the wrong place. This time they were trying something else.
Success! Their tiny light bulb glowed as their turbine's blades picked up speed.
