Dear Twig: OK, then, how does wind power work? Whooo?
First you need a wind turbine. A wind turbine looks like a giant propeller stuck up in the air on the end of a stick — a super-huge stick. Engineers call the giant propeller the rotor. And they call the super-huge stick the tower. The rotor has two or three blades attached; they look like the blades of a giant fan. The tower holds the rotor way up high off the ground to catch more wind.
Next: The wind turns the blades of the rotor. The rotor spins and turns a shaft (like the axle of a wheel). The shaft drives a generator, a device that makes, or “generates,” electricity. What’s neat? The “fuel” for the process, the wind, comes free. And the process makes no pollution.
Wind turbines come in many sizes. Small ones look like a farmer’s windmill, while big ones resemble a pinwheel for MechaGodzilla. Dude!
Want to see one work? Go here — http://eereweb.ee.doe.gov/windandhydro/wind_how.html — and check out the cool animation!
Twig
P.S. Who invented the wind turbine? Big-time inventor Charles F. Brush of Cleveland in 1888!
Note: Sources included Green Energy Ohio (http://www.greenenergyohio.org/) and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Wind and Hydropower Technologies Program (http://eereweb.ee.doe.gov/windandhydro
/wind_how.html). Details on and cool pics of Mechagodzilla: http://kaiju.boomcoach.com/gallery/mechazilla.html.
“Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick,” a service of The Ohio State University College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences — specifically, of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC) and Ohio State University Extension, both part of the College — is a weekly column for children about science, nature, farming and the environment. For details and to receive Twig free by mail, e-mail or fax, contact Kurt Knebusch, News and Media Relations, CommTech, OSU/OARDC,1680 Madison Ave., Wooster, OH 44691, knebusch.1@osu.edu, (330) 263-3776. Available online at extension.osu.edu/~news/archive.php?series=science.
