How can we capture renewable energy from nature?

In my science and math classes, we have combined our work with energy with our lessons with graphs to make a very cool project. Our project was designed to show us how to create energy using aspects of nature.

My group, which included Sofia, Reid and Ethan, decided to make a water wheel. Making a water wheel would use the force of moving water to spin a generator and light up multiple LED lights. We decided to use our core competencies to our advantage while making our project by splitting up roles based on our individual skills.

Although this project sounds pretty self explanatory, it took multiple drafts to come up with a plausible prototype. First, we started out with a pulley system that would spin the generator using elastic bands and string. As you can probably guess, this did not work very well. Not only was it too fragile to be put in moving water, it also didn’t attach to the handle of the generator.

After coming to the conclusion that we needed a simpler machine that was sturdy and actually worked, we decided to use wood planks. The wood strips were glued together so that it looked like a wheel from a real water wheel. Of course, this was way too heavy to be used in a stream and needed a stronger current. This would have been fine because it did work, but we wanted our project to be able to work in streams that we have around us. What we needed was a strong, light, and easyily accessible generator that worked with a small current. Easy, right?

It took us another day of brainstorming before we decided on a handheld device that had six solo cups glued to a container. When the water entered the cups, it would rotate the container, which would spin the generator. Well, it was supposed to.

After breaking our machine and loosing one of our solo cups, we knew that we needed a new plan. When the water filled one of the cups, instead of rotating the container, it sunk the whole generator. We knew right away that we had to cut the cups in half to make them into scoops so that they wouldn’t sink. We also extended the cups on thin pieces of wood so that there would be more energy produced.

Thankfully, this draft of our generator worked! Now comes the fun part; making an advertisement video for our generator! I really enjoyed this part of the project because we had a lot of fun making it as cheesy as possible. We had to make graphs to represent our work and incorporate them in the video, but that didn’t stop our video from being fun and personal.

I hope you learn something new while watching our video, and enjoy watching it as much we enjoyed making it!

These mind maps show the growth in my learning during this unit!

Before the project:

After the project: