4th Grade Learning Fair

3/27/13 - Tamsy decided to do a project about wind power.  Jake helped her build a windmill attatched to a lightbulb demonstrating how the turning windmill generates power and lights the light bulb.  Unfortunately the propeller didn't turn fast enough with a fan, so she had to hit it to spin it in order to get it moving enough to light the bulb.  That is why she is wearing a glove -- it hurt her hand to whack the propeller so hard so many times.

She did a great job explaining it to people at the fair.  Here are a few things she typed up to put on her poster board along with the diagram she drew and photos she found online of offshore and onshore windmills:

How to Build a Windmill

To build a windmill first make a stand out of PVC  pipes.  Then put a long skinny pipe into the stand. Make sure it is pointing upward.  Next drill a hole at the base of the pipe.  When you have done that you must place an angled piece of pipe on the long skinny one.  Make sure they fit together tightly.  After that put the wires through the hole and up the pipe to the top where it will be connected to a motor.  Connect a propeller to  the motor.  If the propeller doesn’t fit then you can use glue to adhere them together.

How a Windmill Works

If you think that windmills get power from wind, your wrong.Windmills actually get power from movement. Its true, you need wind to create that movement, but the movement is what really generates the power. The wind spins the propellor which is attached to a motor.When the propellor spins the motor does to, and when the motor spins, the movement generates the power, which travels down a wire, and toward some electrical source; example: A light bulb

It takes more than just one windmill to create enough electricity to power all of the many electronic things that we use, including lightbulbs.  Windmills can power our houses, schools,and even businesses.

Windmills are placed in places where there is a lot of wind.

Windmills that work together are called farms. One very famous farm (also one of the biggest farms) is located in Ireland. There are about 200 windmills there.That farm cost about 600 million dollars.  Some wind farms are onshore which means they are on land.  Other wind farms are offshore which means that they are in water.

If your house was powered only by windmills you would probably have a lot of power outages. The only way that you wouldn’t is if the windmills had enough energy stored for the times when your lights are failing.

There are some downsides to windmills. One is that you can never really predict the wind.  Another one is that windmills can be a threat to birds and other wildlife.  Sometimes birds are killed by the spinning blades.  Also when you dig the holes so you can place the windmills it can destroy the underground animal habitats. Windmills are also very loud. That is why they are built in locations where there are no people close by.