Kabir was inspired by the book, “The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind” by William Kamkwamba. So, he created a windmill for the reading fair. For Science Fair, he took the same project a step further and did an experiment to figure out the effect of blade numbers, blade length and windspeed on the amount of electricity generated by a windmill.
Here’s the video of the his tests: Windmill Science Experiment Movie.
Here’s the paper (in MS Word) he wrote after conducting the experiment: The Effect of Blade Numbers, Blade Length and Windspeed on the Amount of Electricity Generated by a Windmill. We practiced first with our Peak Homeschool Group and then we went to Ole Miss for MSEF Region VII Lower Fair. Kabir won second place in the category of Earth, Space and Environmental Sciences and he won best of Class II (4th – 6th grade).
Arjun chose to make his own motor for science fair. He took the initiative to find a YouTube video, make a list of materials needed and explained the process to Amit in detail. We were so impressed that we had to let him do this project. Arjun made the motor with Amit’s help. He did almost 80% of the work on his own including trying to write the explanations that needed to be printed out and glued to his project board. He got the idea of making the motor from the motor that we bought at Hobby Lobby for Kabir’s Windmill project. He impressed us with his understanding. He learnt about the motor from a YouTube video.
Here’s the photo of his motor. Here’s the movie showing his working motor.