Hello, Home Edders!
It's Science experiment day today! We have just concluded our Science project today about different kinds of energy. We discussed solar, water, and wind energy.
In 2018, we had a little field trip to Masdar City here in Abu Dhabi where they use solar energy to run the city. We visited the 10-megawatt (MW) Masdar City Solar PV plant, Masdar Institute (where we were supposed to ride the solar-powered car), and the Eco-Villa, which was fully powered by solar energy. While I would have wanted to bring them there again, the pandemic just makes it complicated for us to visit such places.
Making Energy At Home
So we decided to just make a project to generate energy by using materials that can be found inside our house. Using this reference from education.com, we tried to generate hydropower!
Materials:
For this activity we used:
- plastic soda bottle
- yarn
- ruler
- marker
- cutter
- scissors
- styrofoam (to replace the cork)
- wooden barbeque skewer
- small objects to lift
We cut the plastic soda bottle so that we had strips that would be inserted into the slit styrofoam to make a water wheel.
It was a challenge to make sure that the plastic strips were tightly in place because we will be put under a stream of water but we were able to pull it through eventually.
Ready for take off, ma'am?
Unexpected Turnout
The reference activity suggested the water wheel to be installed on a funnel, secured by paper clips (photo on right). We were not able to do so because our water wheel was bigger than our funnel!
What shall we do?
I asked the kids to take a break and think of a way on how we can use our water wheel. We cannot just let our efforts go in vain only because our funnel was smaller.
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.
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There was silence.
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Then some excited squeals!
"It worked! It worked!", they shouted.
So I came to them and this is what I saw:
The water wheel turned into a wind turbine. They used the fan to blow steady wind on the turbine and it was able to lift the little toy.
Water Wheel, Finally!
But we made this project to generate hydro power! What should we do?
The following morning, we tried to make a set up outside. We were to use a bucket to settle the water wheel but the bamboo skewer was shorter than the rim of the bucket.
We were able to make it work but we later on had a better idea!
We settled the water turbine on this plastic stand in our garden. We also replaced the toy that we were to lift because the plastic doll was a bit heavy.
Now, this is better!
We loved it!
We had lots of fun doing the project and making it work. We were only planning to generate one kind of energy but with curiosity and determination, we completed two!
Of course, since we were already outside and were already using water, we ended up playing with water too. Spraying mists of "rain" and making rainbows! It was a fun-filled activity indeed.
How about you? What kept you busy today?
