AP Environmental Science Wind Turbine Lab

Picture of Canadian Wind Farm from www.dropyourenergybill.com

         
          The AP Environmental Science course covers a variety of topics, including the examination of alternative energy sources. One of these is the conversion of the wind's kinetic energy  into mechanical energy which can generate usable power to do work.

          Traditionally this energy would be captured by the blades of a windmill. The wind passing over the blades causes them to rotate. The mechanical energy of this rotation was then harnessed to drive mill stones for grinding grains or mechanical pumps to draw water from wells or drive irrigation systems. In their more modern iterations, these simple machines' rotational mechanical energy is used to generate electrical energy. Such machines are the modern wind turbines that are currently being deployed in wind farms to generate electrical energy.

          Blade material, shape, and size have a major effect on the power a wind turbine can generate. Other variables in blade design, such as blade length, pitch, and weight can be manipulated to maximize efficiency. In this exercise the students manipulate these variables and try to design a blade that will generate the most electrical energy as measured by current produced in their simple circuits.

Aine, Michaela, Kathleen etal. decided to go with a three bladed turbine, whose blades were relatively long, broad and tear shaped. Their pitch looks moderate.

Gibbs, Kevin, Brendan etal. went with a turbine with five relatively short blades with what look like a rather severe pitch.

The blades on Greg, Billy, Matt and Jack's turbine seemed more "squared" off and of moderate length. From this angle the blades appear to have almost no pitch. 

Kevin, Karly etal. chose to go with a three bladed turbine. The body of their blades were square with a triangular distal end. The pitch of the blades in this picture looks to be less than 45 degrees.

Nina, Jan and Niki chose to design their turbine with three large "bullet" shaped blades with minimal pitch.

Sam, Nick, Angus etal. designed a six bladed turbine with the "tapered square" shape. The pitch of the blade appears to be minimal.