Today was a very hands-on engineering day for the kids. We did two activities today that were so amazing! After the activities I starting hearing, "I think I want to be a meteorologist when I grow up" or "Wind energy engineering sounds really cool!". It was a major triumph for our camp! I believe we are planting the seeds of our future in the young minds of our campers.
We started off with a homemade wind turbine. The kids had to make a spinning turbine that could convert 5 mph of wind into the movement of blades with only a Styrofoam ball, Popsicle sticks, tongue compressors, and spoons! We had a camper get his turbine to spin over 32 mph!! Apparently we have many budding engineers in our group. Then, I got to have a discussion with them about how wind is CLEAN and RENEWABLE! It will always be there for us to harvest, all we need is better technology to move it to big cities and better turbine designs. You never know the next big turbine engineer could be from our camp :) I also got to mention that Kansas is one of the best states for wind farms because of our rural abundance of land and how Kansas is the third windiest state in the US.
Hurricane Houses was our other activity for the day. The campers (including me) got to design a house that could withstand 102 mph winds (which came from a handy leaf blower). They were allowed 4 Popsicle sticks, 2 sheets of paper, 2 feet of tape, glue, and a straw. It turns out that all you need is a good design. Roofs have to be firmly attached and so do the foundations. We learned that if houses along the coast were being built to withstand hurricanes there would be less fatalities and loss of property.
Overall it was an amazing day! I hope you like my action-packed photos from today.
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