Wind Lift

80 youth max, 1 hour minimum

The following is an event plan for the activity based on one hour. Expand the time required for initial testing and subsequent testing if more time is allotted. 

 

Other resources:

Engineering Notebooks (provided by TeacherGeek): Simple      Advanced

Overview (provided by TeacherGeek)

 

Event Plan:

Introduction (10 mins)

Welcome/Engineering Overview

Volunteers Intros

Describe the Design Process

Activity (40 mins)

Introduction (5 mins)

                Explain the goal of the activity (to lift the most pennies you can; the goal is not to beat    others but to improve on your initial design); Separate the youth into teams of three

Initial Design Process (10 mins)

Test/Re-design (20 mins)

Wrap Up (5 mins)

Q& A (10 mins)

Notes for School:

Students should bring: Pencils, scissors

The Gym should have ten tables (2’x2’ or similar) for testing purposes around the room. Students can work on the floor or at other tables provided (school’s choice) in groups of three.

The school provides 10 floor fans, one for each testing facility.

Activity Details:

Description

In this activity students will design wind turbine blades, construct them and test them to see how many pennies they can lift. They will modify their designs to increase the number of pennies their design can lift.

Through this activity, the students will learn and implement the design process. They will understand that failure is a natural part of learning and will hopefully gain a confidence in themselves with respect to engineering.

Materials

  • Skewers
  • Wind Turbine Base (10)
  • Materials for blade construction
  • Engineering Notebook printouts
  • Fans (10)
  • Measuring tape
  • Extension cords
  • Tape
  • Screwdrivers (Phillips-head) (10)
  • Pennies  (if unavailable, washers will work)

Volunteer Roles

Set up the area to facilitate the activity.

Assign a lead volunteer to introduce the activity. This person’s (can be shared) role is to convey the following messages:

  • Engineering is about problem solving at its core.
  • Engineers are focused on helping make the world a better place by keeping people and the environment safe.
  • Engineering is very broad (many different careers, industries); this can be achieved by telling stories about where and how engineers work (hospitals, arctic, offices, in the field, with robots, with plants and water, etc.)

One implicit message we would like you to convey is that engineers are both men and women. This can be done by saying “she” during the stories of engineers, it does not need to be an explicit statement.  

Introduce yourself during the intro, include what you studied, an interesting part of your work, why you enjoy engineering and why you would encourage students to consider it.

One volunteer should describe the design process, the part we are focusing on is iterative design. Engineers never get the “right” answer on the first attempt, they are always looking for improvements to their designs.

Distribute notebooks to each group. Set up and operate the wind turbine bases and fans during the design/testing portion of the activity. Due to the number of volunteers and testing stations, volunteers may need to manage two testing stations simultaneously. 

Provide guidance to groups by asking questions.

Operating the testing stations will require the use of a screw driver to insert and remove the blades, turning on a fan and counting pennies (you can leave that up to the students if you get busy). The bases will be pre-constructed but I have attached the information for you in case you are interested.

Q&A time will need one volunteer to invite questions from the students. This is a good place to share the “How do you recognize and engineer?” story about the Iron Ring being on the pinky finger of the hand we write with to create the constant reminder that people will be impacted by our actions. Answer questions during Q&A.

Hand out gifts and brochures as a thank you to the students for participating.