A Whirl "Wind" Workshop– St Paul’s Way Trust
Having conducted a trial workshop on the subject of wind, we had a good understanding of the material that had to be delivered. That said, having just got to the halfway point of a house renovation and only just moving back, I personally felt less than fully prepared. Nonetheless, we did have an excellent PPL PWR team!
Following a few last minute preparations; 2D printing papermaterials, 3D printing wind turbines and blades, we meet at the local cafébeforehand. With only an hour to go we were filing down 3D models, goingthrough the presentation, blowing up inflatable globes and suns and settlingnerves while also encouraging each other.
So, Adam, Lucia, Josh and Berni rocked up to the school…giantglobe in hand, and it took a while to get through security, not that there wasanything untoward. We had 10 students in total. No doubt very enthusiasticabout the lesson ahead.
We started by looking at the wind and where it comes from i.ethe Sun. The globe was used for this and some slides showing the theory. Eyesglazed slightly at this point, we certainly need to find fun practical ways ofdemonstrating the Sun’s effect on the wind. Various drawing exercises and theglobe were good to start conversations, though.
Then we moved on to aerodynamics. We had printed lots of 3Dmodels to study and understand how aeroplanes work. Using drawings, thestudents got a better understanding of how lift and drag are essential forflight and to create energy using wind turbines. Unfortunately, there was notime for the cone drop test to show aerodynamics further.
Now it was about making a functioning wind turbine. We learnt alot from the last trial workshop and came equipped with instructions. Plus, wehad a really good idea of what to expect. Some students started cutting bottlesbefore thinking about how to carry out the activity and it was a steep learningcurve, leading to some very small turbines. Some choose really challengingdesigns and others followed the instructions to the letter. Nevertheless, everyone in the class successfullycompleted a wind turbine and made it spin in front of a fan! Often learning avaluable lesson about aerodynamics as most of the turbines did not work at thefirst attempt, each of the blades needed to be bent a little using the heat ofa candle to make them more aerodynamic. It worked a trick every time!
Those who ventured for a much less conventional turbine in theform of a vertical axis wind turbine were very successful and theirs actuallyworked first time. They had to be resourceful and use the inside of a pen as anaxle, we were really impressed.
We finished on how to generate electricity and had a shortdiscussion of how electromagnetism and generators work. Time was very limitedcoming to the end of the class. This is something that we can expand on in thefuture and hopefully have a practical demonstration with coils of copper wireand magnets. There was just time to introduce the App that we’ve beendeveloping recently, and set them a short quiz on what they had learnt thatday.
During the debrief after the workshop we all agreed that itwent pretty well. We were happy that the class were very engaged and seemed toenjoy the content. We were missing a few pieces of equipment on the day, thoughthis did not affect the learning objectives. The number one thing to work onfor next time is some more interactive experiments in the earlier part of theworkshop.