To challenge the students in his class more, science teacher Troy Johnson gave an assignment to two of his classes - eighth grade science and the high school Engineering Principles class - to make windmills. Eighth graders were divided into groups to create the projects. However, the engineering class worked together to make theirs.
“Building the windmill has become a good challenge for us in engineering class,” senior Jake Sollner said. “It’s teaching us how to harvest the wind and power and electricity.”
Both classes stated the challenge was fun and made them work together to work through the challenges. Because both classes were building the windmills from scratch, there were several challenges along the way.
“At one point we could not get our windmill to spin and found out that the paint made it not spin so we made a new shaft,” eighth grader Natalie Neff said.
Neff also stated most of their mechanical work was done by eighth grader Drewe Morgan. With all of their teamwork, Neff said the building of the windmill went pretty smoothly, and would really like to do it again. Both classes started building their windmills before Christmas Break. Most of their materials were collected from and around the school, which did sometimes create a challenge.
“The hardest part is what we are struggling with right now, we need to get a piece to slip onto the PVC pipe we have, and it has to hold a generator that has a gear on it,” sophomore Chaz Smith said. “We are going to try and 3D print a piece for that but it’s taking longer than expected. Everything else we got from the old bathroom at the football field, or from the shop.”
For the engineering class, this has been a learning experience for them. Sollner stated he has learned a lot from building the windmill, and so have the others who helped him build the windmill. There were several parts that were challenging to build, but Sollner welcomed them.
“My favorite part I had was trying to make a guard for the windmill wings, it was challenging but fun,” Sollner said.
Overall, both classes had fun building these windmills. For the eighth graders, they stated it was fun to work as a team to make their windmill work, and that they could do it alongside their friends. For the engineering class, it was more a learning experience, but still fun.
