Windmills and Wind Turbines Are Different Things!

“We’re all going to die soon”

This project has been a real learning experience. Some may see that as a bad thing, but for me, learning and growing from my mistakes in my work is an important part of life.

Maybe to some people, a natural-energy power generator that doesn’t make power out of natural energy is a fail. The machine itself was a fail, but not a failure. 

I learnt from the experience, I know new things, took information from my failures, and will do better next time.

This project fits under the following Science 10 curricular competencies—

• Processing and Analyzing Data and Information
• Planning and Conducting
• Evaluating 

[PROCESSING AND ANALYZING DATA AND INFORMATION]

The processing and analyzing of information mostly came to this unit in the form of lessons and small “lectures” about the content of our unit. In this case, that is the information of how energy is conducted and how it can be used and generated. The lessons also explained to us where to find, and how to create, energy out of the natural world around us.

Analyzing the information was when we decided what parts of what we learnt would help us in our project and to help us create ur final product. 

[PLANNING AND CONDUCTING]

We used this competency to come up with the design of our project, and create a first (and second) draft of the product we were creating. We planned out what kind of energy we would be using, how we were going to collect and use the energy, and how we can do it with the tools we had available to us. 

The conducting part of this competency comes with the creation of the products. The building, gluing, breaking apart and re-building… all that jazz.

[EVALUATING]

This competency comes in the times when we had to look at our creation ad decide what to change to make it more effective. In our case, that came with making a second draft where our wind turbine
blades were larger, and better attached to the generator. As it turns out, that didn’t make too big of a difference when I didn’t put the blades on an angle that the wind could easily capture (oops). 

It also came into use when looking at our feedback from the project. We looked at it, saw what we could’ve done better for next time, and recognized our mistakes and the changes we would’ve made if we were to create a third draft of the machine. 

[CONCLUSION]

As said in the beginning, this whole project has been a learning experience. For me, that includes our Fail>Try Agin>Fail Again project product, but it also includes the actual learning we did in this unit. How we went form having questions and knowledge like this:

To this 

Learning all about how nature can be turned into energy that could even charge an iPhone in a surprising short amount of time for High School projects. 

Thanks for reading about my most recent adventures in Scimatics 10!

[BONUS]

Shout out to Melika for being my project partner!