Hi everyone. My name is Hoyt. I work here at the U.S. Department of Energy. I help manage
some of our research projects on wind energy and that's what we're going to be doing today.
We got a fun little project that takes a couple minutes that can help educate you about wind
and yea, so we'll jump right into it.
So in terms of materials, it's pretty basic. You've got this paper that you can print out
at home, that can be downloaded from our website at energy.gov. There's just two pieces. There's
the tower, which holds up the blades for the wind turbine. And so we're going to have to
cut both of these out and fold them up and do a couple of other things and the only other
materials that you need for this are a small little eraser from a pencil or something,
a little dress pin, and a little bead. And you can use all sorts of different sizes for
these, it really doesn't matter. These are just to hold the blades to the tower.
So, we'll get started.
As we cut this out, one thing, I think... I'm not sure everybody is aware but wind turbines
in the real world are actually getting larger and larger. They are getting taller and you
might have seen some wind turbines in your state, in your neighborhood, in your county
somewhere, and they are pretty big. But these are small little wind turbines we're cutting
out today so these are not necessarily to scale but, yea, wind is pretty cool. We're
excited about wind at the Department of Energy. You know, there's more and more of it that's getting
built everywhere and, you know, as I think most people would agree, clean energy is a good thing.
Alright, so we finally got our wind turbine pieces cut out here. So this is an optional
step. If you want to you can color either your blade or your tower or both. Towers are
usually white when you see them out in the real world but we can make them any color
we want so I'm going to make my wind turbine blades a little bit green because wind is
clean, green energy.
Ok, so now that we have our wind turbine colored the way we want it to, we're actually going
to start to put this thing together. So this is maybe the trickiest step in building your
turbine. You are going to notice in the back here with all the lines that we used to cut
this out, there's some longer, darker, thicker lines as opposed to some of the short dotted
lines in here. And what we have to do is just bend the paper here and cut these so that
these little slots on the other side can eventually fit in to them as we bend our wind turbine
around our tower. So really all it takes is just a little snip up the line right here
and we're done. Yep. So you got a little hole just like that and you just got to repeat
that twice.
Ok, so we're on to the next step. We got our little slots cut out, now we just have to
start folding this guy up. So along all of these little small dotted lines, you just
have to fold this. And what's going to happen is you're going to see your tower will start
wrapping around on itself and by the time you get to the last fold here, you should be able to fit these slots into
each other.
Alright, so we got our turbine blades and tower all colored. We got them put together.
Now we're at the last step. We got to get the blade on to the tower. This is definitely
the hardest part for the people in the real world but for us, hopefully it's going to
be very easy. So, before I start doing that, the one thing you're going to notice is that
on the back of your wind blades here, this is an optional step, you don't have to do
this, but it will allow your blades to spin hopefully when the wind is blowing or you're
blowing on it. Basically, you just need to take these dotted lines in the back of the
blade and just bend them a little bit. You don't have to fold them on itself, you just
have to create a little bit of an edge here on these three blades. Just bend it up along
that a little bit, and then you're all set to go.
So basically, you got your tiny piece numeral uno, the pin. The pin goes through the blades,
right in the middle. Tiny piece number two. You got your little bead and that goes, if
you can line it up, that goes right on the back of your pin there. Step number three,
you got your tower. Just plugs right in there, and then to hold it all together. We got our
eraser and then you just need to be very careful in putting this through the eraser so that
you don't poke your finger but with any luck now everything's together and your wind turbine
spins.
So now we got our little wind turbine, you can make one of these, you can make a lot
of these, you can give them to your friends, you can give them to your parents and if you
want to learn more about these, more about wind turbines in general you can find all
sorts of information on energy.gov and just have a great time with it.
Thanks.