The Wind at Work: An Activity Guide to Windmills
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About this ebook
Explaining how the wind works, what windmills have contributed to the past, and why they offer environmental promise today as a source of clean, renewable energy, this revised and updated edition offers a glimpse into all the current and historical uses for wind power. Featuring new information on wind energy technology and wind farms, new photographs, and 24 wind-related activities—from keeping track of household energy use and conducting science experiments to cooking traditional meals and creating arts and crafts—this handy resource offers kids interested in the science of energy and green technologies an engaging, interactive, and contemporary overview of wind power.
Gretchen Woelfle
Gretchen Woelfle began writing for children by turning family history into short stories and has gone on to publish award-winning picture books, middle grade nonfiction, biographies, and historical fiction including The Wind at Work, Katje the Windmill Cat, and All the World's A Stage: A Novel in Five Acts. She is now focusing on biographies of unsung women in American history: Jeannette Rankin: Political Pioneer; Write on, Mercy! The Secret Life of Mercy Otis Warren; and Mumbet's Declaration of Independence. Visit Gretchen online at gretchenwoelfle.com.
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Reviews for The Wind at Work
1 rating1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I like this book because it is full of diagrams, blue prints, photographs and even directions on how to make your own windmill. I would use this in a 2nd grade to fifth grade class, I would read some of the chapters out loud showing the children the pictures. I would also have this book in the Science Conner so that students can look at it by selves and get Ideas. I like the fact that it has a chapter in the back of the book of addresses where famous windmills are so that maybe if there is one near where I live I can take the children on a field trip to go see it.
Book preview
The Wind at Work - Gretchen Woelfle
Copyright © 1997, 2012 by Gretchen Woelfle
All rights reserved
Second edition
Published by Chicago Review Press Incorporated
814 North Franklin Street
Chicago, Illinois 60610
ISBN 978-1-61374-100-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Is available from the Library of Congress.
Cover design: Joan Sommers Design
Cover images: (clockwise from upper right) The Mill at Wijk by Jacob van Ruisdael, Royal Netherlands Embassy; wind farm, iStockphoto; wind turbine, iStockphoto; North American windmill, photograph by Bob Popeck
Interior design: Sarah Olson
Printed in the United States of America
5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments
1 Harnessing Wind Power Through Time
Compare Element Temperatures
Learn How Temperature Affects Wind
2 Ancient Wind Machines
Make a Wind Sock and Wind Vane
Measure the Wind with Admiral Beaufort
3 Windmills in Europe Across the Centuries
Mill Grain
Write About the Wind
4 A Windmiller’s Life
Create Landscape Art
Bake Whole Wheat Rolls
5 All-American Windmills
Bake Colonial Apple-Cranberry Cobbler
Create a Windmill Paper Collage
Sew a Windmill Pot Holder
Make a Windmill Pillow Cover
6 Inventors and Cowboys Work the Wind
Prairie Cookin’ Corn Dodgers
Cook On-the-Trail Beans
Sing a Song of the American West
7 A New Kind of Windmill
Make an Electric Inventory of Your House
Learn What Life Was Like Before Electricity
Spend a Day Without Electric Power
8 Wind Power Today
Learn How Much Electricity You Use
Save Energy at Home
9 A Solution in the Wind
Find Out About Your Energy Sources
Take Environmental Action
10 Fulfilling the Promise
Global Wind Day
Investigate a Wind Farm
Where to Find Windmills
Resources
Renewable Energy and Wind Energy Groups
Student Environmental Groups
Historical Associations
Windmill Careers
Glossary
Picture Key to Windmills
Bibliography
Websites
Books
Author Interviews
Source Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
As I sat down to write this second edition of The Wind at Work, I had a new tool to use—the Internet. It’s hard to fathom that when I wrote the first edition back in the mid-1990s, I did all my research in books, corresponded by US Mail, found windmill sites via long-distance telephone calls, and collected illustrations printed on paper.
However, one source of information has remained the same—the generous people who provided information, research leads, photographs, and interviews. Paul Gipe was there in 1997 to help with the first edition, and he repeated the favor for this one. Dr. T. Lindsay Baker, still publishing the Windmillers Gazette, also helped. Dan Juhl of Juhl Wind, Inc.; Richard Miller of Hull, Massachusetts, Municipal Light Plant; Michael Wheeler of enXco; and Peggy McCoy of the Cascade Community Wind Project shared their time and experience. Kit Gray was a master of all things photographic. Alice Woelfle-Erskine proved an invaluable research assistant, and Cleo Woelfle-Erskine, writer and scientist, gave the book an astute reading as he himself works to heal the planet. Finally, Cynthia Sherry and her staff at Chicago Review Press deserve a big shout-out for keeping the first edition of The Wind at Work in print for 15 years and for overseeing its latest version. My thanks to them all.
1
Harnessing Wind Power Through Time
Night fell on the flatlands of Holland. The wind howled, rain slashed to earth, and waves broke higher and higher on the beach. Flashes of lightning revealed a high wall of earth built to hold back the sea. Waves crashed against this dike, throwing water to the fields beyond and washing away parts of the dike itself.
The Dutch called the sea the Waterwolf, and tonight the Waterwolf was on the prowl, trying to steal their lands. All night long flickering lanterns moved along the top of the dike as villagers kept watch. If the dikes broke, the Waterwolf would swallow their farms and homes.
By morning, the rain subsided and the wind dropped. The storm was over. The dikes had held. Tired Dutchmen stumbled home to bed.
But there was no rest for the windmillers. All night they had worked the windmills to pump water from the overflowing canals back out to sea. Now they had to drain the flooded fields to save the crops. For days and nights, giant windmill sails would turn, pumping and pumping until the fields were dry. The wind that nearly destroyed the land would now help to save it.
Rembrandt van Rijn (1609-1669), one of the Netherlands’ greatest artists, was the son of a windmiller. He grew up across the street from his father’s malt mill in Leyden. The mill stood on the banks of the Rhine River (spelled Rijn
in Dutch). The family took this name for their own. Here Rembrandt portrays a smock mill and the miller’s house next door. Rijksmuseurn-Stichting, Amsterdam
The History of Wind Power
Wind is created by the sun as it warms the earth unevenly. Warm air expands and rises. Cool air rushes in to take its place. This air movement is what we call the wind.
For more than a thousand years people have harnessed the wind with windmills. People used the wind to propel sailboats on the water long before they built windmills on land. Billowing sails filling with wind replaced the hard work of men rowing and paddling. Eventually, wind-powered machines moved on land and saved a lot of heavy labor. The wind-filled windmill sails then turned a shaft, wheels, gears, and finally, millstones, water pumps, or other machines. Before the invention of windmills and water mills, men or animals turned heavy millstones by trudging around and around in a circle, hour after hour, day after day, crushing grain to make flour. It was mind-numbing, body-breaking work.
The wind is not a perfect source of energy. It can be steady or gusty. It can change direction in a few seconds. It can grow to the force of a hurricane or die completely. Scientists can predict daily and seasonal wind patterns, but these patterns won’t tell if or how much the wind will blow tomorrow afternoon. Even so, the wind has been reliable enough for many uses through the centuries.
Wind is created by the sun as it warms the earth unevenly. Lands near the equator get more sun than those near the poles. Summer brings more sun than winter. Warm air expands and rises, and cool air rushes in to take its place. The drawing shows the usual, or prevailing, winds in different parts of the earth. Kristin Brivchik
This cutaway drawing of a windmill shows different parts of the machinery in a grist (grinding) mill.
Bruce Loeschen
A. Brake wheel: Cogwheel mounted on the windshaft that drives the wallower, and around the rim of which the brake contracts to stop the mill.
B. Brake mechanism: Mechanism to stop the sails from turning.
C. Windshaft: The axle on which the sails are mounted.
D. Wallower: The large circle with cogs that turns the main shaft.
E. Main shaft: The main upright driving shaft.
F. Sack lift: Rope is wound around this wooden drum, which pulls sacks of grain to the third level of the mill.
G. Great spur wheel: The main driving wheel for millstones and other power wheels.
H. Cogwheel: Meshes with smaller cogwheels that drive other millstones and machinery.
I. Grain chute: Guides grain into hopper.
J. Sack trap: Portion of the floor that opens, allowing millers to pull up sacks of grain to the third level.
K. Hopper: Placed above the vat that holds the grain waiting to be ground.
L. Grindstones or millstones: Always in pairs, the bottom stone is stationery and is called the bed stone. The top stone revolves and is called the runner stone.
Along the seacoast the land and the air above the land warm up quicker than the water. All day long this warm air rises and cool sea breezes blow from the ocean to the land.
Kristin Brivchik
In the evening the land cools off quicker, and the ocean remains warmer. Warm ocean air rises and a cooler land breeze blows out to sea.
Kristin Brivchik
The Mill at Wijk by Dutch artist Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-1682). The 1600s were the golden age of Dutch windmills and landscape painting.
Royal Netherlands Embassy
Like the wind itself, windmills have come and gone. From AD 1200 to 1900, windmills were the most powerful machines in Europe. They ground grain, pumped water, pressed oil, sawed wood, and performed many other tasks. In the 1800s windmills were replaced by steam engines. Today about 900 Dutch windmills remain out of 10,000 that stood 200 years ago. In America, six million windmills pumped water on the dry Western plains until the 1940s, when electric and gasoline engines did away with most of them. Today a new kind of windmill turns in the wind.
Many people think of Dutch models when they think of windmills, but windmills come in many shapes and sizes. Ancient Persian-style mills looked like revolving doors. Modern wind turbines look like giant airplane propellers. All of them can harness a powerful energy source to work for us.
Wind Power Today
Thousands of wind turbines stand in the hills and plains of the United States today. Thousands more are scattered across Canada, Europe, China, and the rest of the world. They are new versions of an old idea.
From far away, wind turbines look like toy pinwheels that catch the sunlight as they spin. Up close, these pinwheel giants stand on 300-foot towers with whirling blades up to 300 feet in diameter. A generator behind the blades converts wind energy to electricity. Underground cables carry electric currents to power lines that feed the electricity to nearby towns and cities.
Clean, Renewable Energy Source
Wind power is a renewable source of energy, so we will never run out of it. It’s clean, safe, and free for all to use.
Currently, most of the energy we use comes from burning coal, oil, and natural gas. These are called fossil fuels. When these fuels burn, gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur compounds escape into the air. The gases react